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FRIENDS ~ 
MLAMI MONTHLY MEETING | 
CENTENNIAL 

WAYNESVILDE, OHIO 


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LI8l VIInd ASOOH PNLLAAW SANTA 


PROCEEDINGS 
) 


Centennial eg pong: 


Fre Cura t Sacieh,. 


Miami Monthly Meeting 


- WAYNESVILLE, OHIO 


10th Month, 16-17, 1903 


COMMITTEE TO ARRANGE FOR AND HOLD FRIENDS’ COM- 
MEMORATIVE SERVICES. 


7 Sear 
wu et 


Davis Furnas, Chairman, Charles F. Chapman, 
Margaretta K. Brown, Sec., Charles A. Brown, 


William T. Frame, Edwin Chandler, 
Mary Edwards, A. B. Chandler, 
Laura S. Dunham, Anna Kelly, 

Seth H. Ellis, Anna O’Neall, 
Viola K. Hawkins, Samuel Battin, 
Jonathan B. Wright, Martha J. Warner, 
Lillia Compton, Jesse Wright. 


CHARLES A. Brown, Waynesville, O., 
SetH H. Extis, Waynesville, O. 
Presiding officers. 
RAILROAD SECRETARIES. 


Benjamin Johnson, Richmond, Indiana, Joseph C. 
Ratliff, Richmond, Indiana. 


PRESS OF MIAMI GAZETTE. WAYNESVILLE, OHIO+ 


SIC TE NY sg 20) 28.) Min 


CHARLES A. BROWN, WAYNESVILLE, OHIO. 


Almost an exact century ago the first monthly 
meeting of Friends north of the Ohio and west of the 
Hocking river was formed by the regular process here 
at Waynesville, and known as the Miami Monthly 
Meeting. 

We have met for a centennial commemoration, of 
this event, so deep in interest to all members of any 
one of the numerous meetings which have sprung 
from the original Miami meeting as their mother. 

We welcome you here to-day to take part in our 
exercises in celebrating this event, we hope in a worthy 
and profitable way. It is hoped that this may be a 
season of spiritual uplift and unity. One of the most 
pleasing things in the work of the committee having 
the arrangements in charge, was that feeling of unity 
between the branches which unfortunately became sep- 
arated. 


We meet in the utmost candor to celebrate our 
common heritage in that brotherly.and Christian spirit 
which actuated the committee and in which we feel and 
confidently hope all these meetings will be conducted. 

We hope we have grown in that spirit, not merely 
of tolerance, but of catholicity, in which we realize 
that every earnest striver after the truth of God has 
a measure of that truth. 

If a brother in making a statement differs from 
me, I should seek to find an element of truth in his 
possession to add to my own, rather than to think I 


6 


posses it all. In that spirit we may proceed profitably 
with our meetings. 

The century that has passed has been a centuty 
of progressive democracy. We may better express the 
movement of the century as one founded upon the 
thought, even though dimly comprehended, of the uni- 
versal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. 
The Society of Friends realized this thought beyond 
other people of their day, and so strove to break down 
class and priestly distinctions and privileges, and to 
grant to all equal rights and opportunities, and to . 
honor each one only as he lived a life of simple right- 
eousness. 


George Fox and his followers advanced the 
truth that revelation is 72 man rather than #o man; 
that any statement of truth is a mere jingle of 
words to any one who does not comprehend that 
truth, and that with each individual revelation takes 
place as the truth is appreciated in his own conscious- 
ness and becomes a part of his make-up, his character. 
This is the current which is at the bottom of the 
movement of progressive civilization, so rapid in the 
past century, and in which we believe the Society of 
Friends has held a foremost place. 


We have met to consider something of the im- 
press which the Society as a whole has made upon its 
own members and, upon the community at large. A 
stranger came into this neighborhood, saw the more 
quiet “and orderly manner “of life, and inquired its 
cause. I believe it due to the Quaker influence. 

We have met to commemorate something of the 


spirit of the Quaker of the Olden Time as portrayed 
_by Whittier: 


i 


This spirit 


By love and not by hw; 
The presence of the wrong of might 
He rather felt them saw. 


He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, 
That stamds alone, 

‘That whoso gives the motive, makes 
His brother’s sim his own, 

ee pausime mot for doahitul choice 

Oé ewils great or small 

He listened to thet inward voice 

Which calied away from all. 


* ~ * s * * 


SETH H. ELLIS, WAYNESVILLE, OHIO. 


I will request the privilege of deferrmg my re- 
marks until this afternoon's session, as the hoar a 
opening has been necessarily delayed. 


of the early Friends which Whittier 
has so beautifully described in these words is worthy 
of our consideration. 


“* HISTORY OF MIAMI MONTHLY MEETING 
FROM 1803 TO 1828.” 


CLARKSON BUTTERWORTH, WAYNESVILLE, OHIO. 


We have the promise for tomorrow afternoon, 
somewhat on the Fundamental Doctrine of Quakerism, 
“The Inshining and Inspeaking Spirit of God.” This 
has been as universal as the race of rational man. 
“From the day that Adam heard the voice of the Lord 
Gad in the Garden to this hour, the awful accents of 
the Holy Spirit have been distinguished from all other 
calls and Voices.” 

I love to think that when the Prophet discovered | 
God’s truth to be, “I will write my law in their hearts 
and they shall know me,” it was a clearer perception 
than before, of an ever potent truth of the ages. That 
the Light which “liteth every man” has done so from 
the begirining, and through all time has been the 
mighty influence for good among all peoples — that 
it did shirie and yet shineth, even in darkness, though 
the darkness has often “comprehended it not,” knew 
not what- was guiding. And yet men have been prone 
to idolatry, not easily perceiving that God is a spirit, 
and tabertiacles with men, is the authority and power 
im the human soul which sets duty forth and insists 
upon its performance. 


I love to trace in history man’s advancement, 
under this enlightening and benign power and spirit, 
from the ancient doctrine of “an eye for an eye and 
a tooth for a tooth” to the nobler sentiment which 
says “See that none render evil for evil unto any 


9 
man,” and from the notion that “God is a man of 
war,” wreaking vengeance, to that grand perception 
which exclaims “Praise ye the Lord, for he is good; 
for his mercy endureth forever.” 

While this progress has been going on, sterling 
men, Prophets of God, have arisen from period to 
period, to call rulers and people from seli-service, 
gross oppression, and vile living to greater recogni- 
tion of human rights and needs and to the great de- 
mands of righteousness, leading on toward the recog- 
nition of human brotherhood. — The king is no bette 
than the plowman who behaves as well as he. 

More than two and a half centuries ago, in Eng- 
land, the times were ripe for such a prophet and 
leader. Warring factions had long deluged the land 
with biood, and human life and*comfort were little 
regarded. Whatever party chanced to be in the 
ascendant oppressed the others, and religious persecu- 
tion and intolerance prevailed widely. Priest and 
ruler were seif-seeking and profiigate, and spiritual 
wickedness in high places was a reproach to the na- 
tion. Then the pure and innocent George Fox, by 
no means tne least of the prophets, recognizing the 
power and authority of the ‘Indwelling and Inspeak- 
ing Spirit of God,” was impelled to proclaim it, and 
to call men and women into obedience to its moni- 
tions; and multitudes, tired of the insincerity and 
want of. steadfastness which had been so nearly uni- 
versal among the religious professors and teachers, 
were soon gathered into fellowship with the plain 
true man. They had seen how the high dignitaries 
of the church had joined in persecuting those differ- 
ing from them in opinion, but as soon as the chang- 
ing times put uppermost those of different views, 
made haste to save their profits and emoiuments by 
change of religious pretensions; and the “common 


10 


people” were glad to find something more stable, and 
consonant with the witness for truth within them- 

‘ seives. Many of them found like call to service with 
Fox, and, the soil being ready for the seed, went far 
and wide through the nation and into other dominions 
and the islands oi the*sea, and to the shores of Amer-' 
ica, spreading their perception of the truth, and teach- 
ing human equality, human rights, and human 
brotherhood. 

They set up meetings for rehigious communion 
and worship and for the care of the church as there 
seemed need of them, in all countries where they ob- 
tained a foothold. Many migrated to these shores, 
meetings were set up along the seaboard, and later 
further inland, and the Friends and their simple demo- 
cratic ways and views had a powerful influence in 
shaping the free institutions of this country and over- 
throwing human slavery therein. 

In the latter part of the 18th century two m. ms.,. 
Westland and Redstone, were established in South 
Western Pa., and these united in composing Redstone 
Q. M.—ali subordinate to Baltimore Y. M. About 

that time Friends in the slave states, not liking to rear 
and leave their oath under the influence of the 
slave system, and hoping to better their material situa- 
tion as well, beeen to migrate into the Territory N. W. 
of the Ohio river. Settlements were made in Eastern 
; Ohio, and in the neighborhood of Waynesville -— the 
I fatter, at least, coming largely or entirely from the 
| slave's states — many from the m. ms. of Bush River 
| and Cane Creek in Newberry and Union counties, 
South Carolina. Their settlement in the ~ Miami 
| country was within the jurisdiction of Westland m. 
| m. aforesaid. A little later, immigrants arrived from 
| the eastern parts of Pennsy lvania, and from the east- 
| ern seashore states, and elsewhere. 


oo: 


11 
On 11th month, 2oth, 1799, the families of Robert 
Kelly, Abijah O’Neall and James Mills, from Bush 


River m. m., settled near the site of Waynesville. 


4, 25, 1800, David Fauikner and David Painter ar- 
rived from Hopewell! m. m., Frederic Co., Va. George 
Haworth, David: Holloway and Rowland Richards 
came the same year, and in that year Joseph Cloud, 
(who later settled here himself), a minister from 
Cane Creek m. m., N. C., came and held several meet- 
ings among them which are believed to have been the 
first Friends’ meetings held in the original limits of 
Miami m. m., which embraced all the territory north 
of the Ohio River and west of the Hocking, extend- 
ing indefinitely north and west. 

Other Friends continued to arrive until 4, 26, 
1801, when a number ccllected together in a volunteer 
m. f. w. at the dwelling of Rowland and Lydia Rich- 
ards, which the aged and intelligent Mary Baily tells 
me was near the center of the block in Waynesville, 
bounded by North, Third, Miami and Fourth streets, 
and long owned afterwards by Noah Haines and 
family — a part still owned by a granddaughter, Anna 
C. F. O’Neail, and a part by Eliza Haines, widow of 
Seth Silver Haines, youngest son of Noah. Twelve 
families were represented at. the meeting, consisting 
of 24 parents and 47 children, all said to have been 
living within one mile of the meeting place. The 
membership of many of these was, or scon came to 
be, certified to Wesiland m. m. aforesaid, about 200 
miles away, but then the: most suitable m. m. for the 
Friends of this settlement, who maintained their afore- 
said volunteer m. f. w. during that summer, and in 
the following winter forwarded a request to that 
m. m. for a recognized meeting to be granted them, 
to be held on First-days and in the middle of the week, 


12 


and 12, 26, 1801, that m. m. adopted the following 
minute — 

“A number of Friends being settled near the 
Little Miami, request has been made for the privilege 
of holding ms. f. w. on First- and Fifth-days of the 
week. Aiter weighty deliberation it appears to be 
the sense of this meeting that a committee be appointed 
to sit with them, inspect into their situation and judge 
of the prepriety of granting their request. Jacob 
Grifith, Abram Smith, David Grave and Henry Mills 
are appointed to the service, to report when called on 
by this meeting.” 

The following minute of the seme meeting bears 
date 9, 25, 1802. “The Representatives to the O. M., 
[Redstone] report they all attended the same, and 
that that meeting united in leaving this at liberty to 
act in respect to the request of Friends near the Little 
Miami as way may open in the truth. After diverse 
sentiments were expressed it appeared the sense of 
Friends that the request be granted till otherwise di- 
rected. David Grave, Joseph Townsend, Abraham 
Smith and Henry Lewis are appointed to write to the 
Friends there on the occasion and forward the sub- 
stance of this minute when opportunity offers.” It 
seems there were no reliable mails, and private con- 
veyance had to be awaited. 

The meeting was set up accordingly, and appears 
to have used for a meeting house a log building which 
had been erected for a dwelling by Ezekiel Cleaver, 
maternal grandfather of the late Empson Rogers. It 
stood on the N. E, corner of Third and Miami streets, 
at or near the site of the present residence of Adam 
Stoops. The logs for its construction were drawn’ 
together with oxen by William O’Neall, then nine 
years of age—son of Abijah and Anna (Kelly) 


13 


O’Neall, and father of George and the late Abijah 
P. O’Neall. 

The first marriage among the Friends here, was 
that of William Mills, son of James, to Mary, daughter 
of Rowland and Lydia Richards, which was sol- 
emnized by a Baptist minister, a method of marriage 
at that time resorted to with the consent of Friends 
concerned because the m. m. which might.have been 
consulted, was so quite out of reach. They became the 
parents of ten children, of whom Elizabeth, the oldest, 
was born 10, 4, 1803. 

The first Friends’ meeting house, built for that 
purpose, at Waynesville, was on the S. W. corner of 
Fourth and High streets, at or very near the site of 
the present meeting house of Orthodox Friends. It 
was probably erected after Miami m..m. was estab- 
lished — say in 1803 or 1804 and was a log struc- 
ture. I am inclined to the opinion that it was suc- 
ceeded by a larger and better one of the same material 
before Friends built their large brick meeting house 
in 18i11—the same in which we are holding these 
centennial exercises—-on the West side of Fourth 
street, between High and Miami. aut 


Much of the foregoing matter about Friends’ sei- 


tlement and early meetings in these regions I have cle- 
rived from an unsigned but reliable publication, dated 
2, 19, 1863, put forth by the late Achilles Pugh, an 
Orthodox Friend who had lived quite a while in 
Waynesville, and was an intelligent and capable man. 

The m. f. w. aforesaid, authorized by Westland 
m. m. and Redstone Q. M., was of the class called 
Indulged Meetings, and was held on trial, so to 
speak. 
By the forepart of 1803 the Friends settled about 
Waynesville and neighboring regions haa become quite 
numerous. Many of them were, or soon became, 


rd 


14 


members of Westland m. m. by certificates from else- 
where. I have already given the names of some of 
the earliest. Repeating some of them, I now give the 
following nearly full list of all the families, and indi- 
viduais who were parts of families, and some not in 
families, who had arrived before 10, 13, 1803. First 
— some who were certified to Westland m. m. by Bush 
River m. m., S. C., 9, 25, 1802, viz.: 


Abijah and Anna (Kelly) O’Neall, and children. 9 persons 
Samuel and Hannah (Pearson) Kelly and chil- 


Gren oo tocol eae 8 . 
James and Lydia (Jay) Mills and children..... 10 + 
Robert and Sarah (Patty) Kelly and children... 6(?) “ 
Mary (Jay) Patty, wife of Charles Patty....... 1 a 
Layton and Elizabeth (Mills) Jay and children.. 8 me 
Ann Horner, wife of Thomas Horner........... I rs 
Ellis Pugh and Phebe his wife...............- TR 

his partial ist 2220. 0.22. eee 45(?) a] 


From Cane Creek, S. C., m. m. at dates prefixed: 

12, 19, 1803 — Amos and Elizabeth (Townsend) 
Cook, and family. 

12, 19, 1803— Levi and Ann (Fraizer) Cook, 
cand family. 

4, 23, 1803 — Esther Campbell, Naomi Spray. 

4, 23, 1803 — Samuel and Mary (Wilson) Spray, 
and family. 

, 23, 1803 — Robert and Hannah (Wilson) Fur- 

nas, and family. 

5, 21, 1803 — Dinah (Cook) Wilson. i 

5, 21, 1803— Jehu and Sarah (Hawkins) Wil- 
son, and family. ; 

5, 21, 1803 — Christopher and Mary (Cox) Wil- 
son, and family. 

5, 21, 1803 — Thomas and Tamar Cox. 


15 


; This partial list about 40 persons. 

Other names — 

Ezekiel and Abigail Cleaver and iamily. 

Semuel Linton and five children — Nathan, 
David, James, Elizateth (Linton) Satterthwaite, Jane 
(Linton) Arnoid. 

Edward and Margaret Kindiey and family. 

Jokn Muiiin azd iamily. 

Benjamin and Hannah Evans and iamily— 
[This family, though setiled kere before the date 
10, 13, 1803, produced to Miami m. m. im 6th mo, 
1804, a certificate irom Bush River m.m. No doubt 
there were numerous other Frends settled in this 
comer oi Oijio before the cpening of Miami m. m. 
who brought certificates to it later, and yet others 
whom I have failed to mention, whe had been certi- 
fied to Westland m.m.] I would guess the total aum- 
ber of members in this partial list, named and un- 
named, was not less than 75, making a total of fully 
160. 

By this time these felt the need of further meet- 
ing privileges, and about 6th month, 1803, or eazlier, 
through Westland a m: asked of Redstone’. M. 
the establishment of their m. #. w. and the gtani of a 
p.m.andam.m. Thereupon said Q. M. ‘directed a 
commuttee to sit with them and report their judgment 
in the matter, and at the Q. M. held at Westland, 9, 
5, 1803, granted the request as the folowing minutes 
indicate. — 

ist. — “The Committee (excepting one) having 
sat with Friends near Little Miami, report that aiter 
weightily conferring together, did believe that it 
might be right to grant their request — Meeting for 
worship to be held on First- and Fiith-days, Monthly 
Meeting on the second Fiith-day in each month, and 
the Preparative Meeting on the day preceding, to be 


16 
called Miami Monthly Meeting, which the Quarterly 
Meeting unites with and appoints Thomas Grisell, 
Mahlon Linton, Samuel Cope, Enoch Chandler, Jona- 
than Taylor and Horton Howard to attend the open- 
ing of said meetings at the time proposed in next 
month, and confer with Friends and report where they 
may think most suitable for the boundary of said meet- 
ing ae be.” 
2d,— “At Miami Monthly Meeting held the 13th 

day its the roth month 1803, part of the Quarterly 

Meeting committee being present. A copy of a min- 

ute of Westland m. m. was produced to this meeting, 

appointing David Faulkner and Samuel Kelly to serve 

in the s tation of Overseers of Miami particular meet- 

ing’ — [that is, of Miami m. f. w.] The extracts 

{irom the minutes] of our late Y. M. [Baltimore] 

were produced and read. Our Friend Ann Taylor 

produced a certificate to this meeting, dated the 17th 

day oi the goth month 1803, expressive oi the unity 

of Concord m. m. with her visting Friends about the 

fiamis, whose service among us has been acceptable. 

The 1¢ meeting concludes.” 

The first quoted minute above is a copy of a min- 
ute of Redstone Q. M., entered in Miami m. m. book 
in advance of its opening minute, and the further quo- 
tations are the full minutes of the first sitting of Miami 
m. m. itselimen’s department. They do not show 
who served as clerk that day. This was 2 commen 
omission in many m. ms. The Concord m.m. which 
had liberated Ann Taylor for religious labor here, was 
a new one in Eastern Ohio, founded in 1801, and still 
maintained. 

At the next meeting, 11, 12, 1803, Representatives 
from the p. m. were-present, with its answers to the 
Ist, 2d and oth queries which the m. m. adopted. * 
Samuel Linton was appointed Clerk, for the ensuing 


17 


- (Most likely he had served at the opening meet 
Fecia Fisthwife, Rigeateths had died in Penna. and he 
brought a certificate for himself and his five children 
ee ey Samnel 
age Samuel. = were appoim 


ed. 

Aas lead 12, 8, 1803, the frst members were 
received on certificate. Men's minutes do not show 
whence it came, nor the date, but women’s show that it 
was from Bush Riverm m,S.C. lt was for Jemma 
Wright: and her five children, followimg,— Jane, 
Joshua, _Jemima, Joab and Joel—every name im the 
whole six with J: 

At the date 1, 12, 18 fo4, I fimd the men made the 
following minute—“By the minute of the QO. M. held 
the 5th day of the 12th month last, % appears that the 

“rivers Olio and “Hockhocken” are to be the southern 
and eastern boundaries of Miami m. m.” 

The next month—z, 9, wo, some query answers 
were adopted and directed to be forwarded to the ex- 
suimg OQ. M-—[Redstone] “if amy way opens for so 
domme”. Saninel -Spray, David Faulkner; Edwerd 
Kindley and Robert Furnas were appointed to unite 
Witha committee of women Friends in proposing some 

for Elders. Two mouths later they proposed 
Abijah: O'Neail and Jenu Wison om the part of the 
mem The mm. tcok tiie matter under consideration 
and did mot fimally decide till 6, 14, 1804, when the 
nostinatiens were approved. and the matter subenttied 
to the QO. Ms {Redstone}. The committee oa the part 
of the women had been Dinah Wilson, Ltdia Rich- 
ards, Hannah’ Kelly and Margaret Kindiey, and the 
women nominated were Dinah Wilsoa amd Abigail 
Cleaver, who were approved-ia 6th month by the wo- 
men’s meeting, amd the QO. M-. was motiied as mm the 


13 ~ eee Someta # 


| case of the men. «Ik will be seen that Prends aced 
wah great deliberation, as was proper Tieese 2p 
poimtments were for ic, or daring good behavior, and 
We may presume that they, and the members of the 
committe: who nomimated them, were choses fram ==. - 
the Giscrect and reliable members of the Mestiins_ er 

As a iovther recall oi mentorious members Imaay ~~ 
say that gor the time before 2, 1, 1807, other offaxal 
posiiions were conferred as jollows: 

Getater Samo ——_ 13, 18a, 
Robext Foones. 2 10, 1806, Samad 

Assistant Clerk—4, 12, —— 1806, 
Rovert Fares. Z 


Overscer—(aiver 10, 13, 1803)—9, 53, "Boy, 
Isaac Perkins, Waitam Walker 


4. a, , 805—For “Lee's Gi Rem : 


a ii, 1805—Acher Brows. 

9, 12, 1305—Fa: West Branch, Jocege ee 

1, & 1806—For Caesar's Creck, Robert Furnas 
13, 1805—For Gesars Creck, Robert Mall - 


3 
i, 1806—Fer Ek Greek, jeu Kanositiey <i 


&, in 5806—For “Lee's Geek” Ennion Walliams. 
& 14, 1806—For ~Todsiosk.” Francis Hester 2 
g, 11, 1805—For “Lee's Creck,” Phimeas Huet 
1G, 9. 1806—Edward Kindiey for Miami and Wa- 
Kam Walnems ior Geacreck. * 
Ricpreseniairocs to Redstone QO. M—{On a —% 
Occasions MOE Were zappomted because no way to go 
=ppe2red). au 
1i, 10, 1803—Samuel Spray and Samuel Kelly. : 
5, 10, 1204—David Holloway. va 
a, &, 1804—Thomas Perkins, John Smith, rise Bet 
9, 18053—John Wilsca, Phincas Hunt 275 ~ eg 


x 


19 


8, 8, 1805—Mordicai Walker, David Painter, 
David Faulkner. 

5, 8, 1806—Jchn Stubbs, Samuel Spray, John 
Sanders, Isaac Perkins. 

8, 14, 1806—Asher Brown, Samuel Spray, 
Thomas Horner. 

It, 13, 1806—Joel Wright, David Horner. 

Recorder of Births and Deaths—g, 13, 1804— 
Robert Furnas. 

Recorder of Marriage Ceriificates—g, 13, 1804, 
Robert Furnas, 5, 9, 1805, Levi Cook. 

Ministry—7, 10, 1S806G—Samuel Spray’s giit 
therein acknowledged. 

6, 12, 1806—Charity Cook liberated to visi 
families. 

10, 9, 1806—Jacob Jackson liberated to visit the 
m. m.’s branches. 

By 2, 1, 1807, 82 men had accented appointments 
on committees, ranging from one time to twenty-six 
times, and if all the appointments of each are added 
into one sum it makes 387. 

Of all these 


Samuel Spray had........ 26 Rowland Richards had... 8 
Abijah O’Neall .......... dsaac Perkims ...... ie 
Pen MRWH o<. <2. 0... 19 George Haworth ........ 7 
Webss, Wiican... .2.....-- ac, .). Sangeel Rest” a a 7 
David Faulkner ......... 15> . Samuel Packer’: oo. 7 
Mordicai Walker ........ 15... Joseph: @lsad’ 3.4. c2-2 0. 7 
SS (8G) 34: Amos @Geulos ce. .osceas 6 
Robert .Furnas .......... 13° David Holloway .......- 6 
Edward Kindley ........ 10° >John: Ehanty 4222 5 5. 6 
SSS eee 10 Wiliiam Walker ........ 5 
LSCOSAS TOU ee 9 Andrew Hoover ........ 5 
aac Warel ten wass ys. 9 William Lupton ......... a 
Jonathan Wright ........ 


and each of the rest a smaller number. 

These variations are owing to several causes— 
faithfulness, fitness for service, opportunities, place of 
abode, and the time of arriving in the country. 


20 


I find that men’s minutes show, by the same date, 
(2, 1, 1807) about 1,867 accessions by certificate, and 
women accepted, of women and children, quite a num- 
ber besides, of which men’s minutes have no inention. 
Meantime very few took certificates away. Men’s 
minutes show 30 applications for membership; nearly 
all of which were accepted, while on the other hand 
there were 17 disownments, mostly for out-going in 
marriage. There were about 21 marriages, and no 
doubt the births largely exceeded the deaths. 

The large increase in membership which the above 

statements indicate was settled, not at Waynesville and 
its immediate vicinity only, but in several places in 
surrounding counties as- well, and before the date 
aforesaid Miami m. m. had.indulged ms. f. w. as fol- 
lows: 

First—One “for the Friends on Lee’s and Har- 
din’s Creeks,” in Highland County, near the present 
Leesburg. It was granted 5, 10, 1804, and opened 5, 
20, 1804. Merged later in Fairfield established m. f. w. 

Second—One “for the Friends on Todsfork,” at 
or near the present Center, granted 4, 11, 1805, and 
opened 4, 18, 1805, in the the present Clinton county, 
in territory then in Warren county, and so till 1810, 
when Clinton county was organized. Bite 

Third—One at “West Branch” nearly two miles 
Ss. S. w. of the present West Milton, in Miami County, 
Ohio—granted: 5, 9, 1805, and opened 5, 23, 1805, 
about one mile west of the west branch of the Big 
Miami—i. e. west of Stillwater. 

Fourth—One at “Elk Creek,’ near the present 
West Elkton, in Preble county, Ohio—granted 9, 12, 
1805, and opened 9, 26, 1805. Merged later in the 
established m. f. w called Elk Creek. ‘ 

Fifth—‘Caesar’s Creek”—granted 10, I0, 1805, 
and opened not far from the site of the present Caesar’s 


21 
Creek meeting house, on the n. w. side of the creek, 
about 7 miles nearly east of Waynesville, 10, 24, 1805. 
Merged later in the established m. f. w. of the same 
name. 

Sixth—‘Turtle Creek.” At or near the location 
of the present Turtle Creek meeting house, in Turtle 
Creek Township, Warren Co, about 5 miles s. w. of 
‘Waynesville—granted 4, 10, 1806, and opened 5, 8, 
1806. Merged later in Turtle Creek established m. 
f. w. 

Seventh—“Clear Creek,’ “on the waters of 
Paint,” three-fourths of a mile west of the present 
Samantha, in Highland County, Ohio—granted 7, Io, 
1806, and opened 8, 3, 1806. Merged later in the es- 
tablished m. f. w. of the same name—Clear Creek. 

Eighih—‘Fall Creek”—for “the Friends of Fall 
Creek on the waters of Paint,” in Highland Co., near 
the present Rainsboro—granted 9, 11, 1806, and 
opened 9, 28, 1806. Merged afterwards in Fall Creek 
m. f. w., established. 

Ninth—‘Union’—for “the Friends near >the 
mouth of Ludlow’s Creek,” in Miami County, near 
Ludlow Falls, and on the west side of Stillwater— 
granted 10, 9, 1806, and opened 11, 2, 1806. Merged 
later in Union m. f. w., established. 

The Friends in all these places soon called for 
established meetings, and got them, and p. ms. and 
m. ms. were rapidly set up. With the concurrence 
of Miami m. m., 12, 1, 1806, Redstone Q. M. estab- 
lished West Branch, Center and Caesar’s Creek ms. 
f. w. and p. ms. with m. ms. at West Branch and 
Center. The  preparatives were opened—West 
Branch, 1, 15,1807, Center, 2, 4, 1807, and Caesar’s 
Creek, 2, 5,,1807. The m.-ms. were opened, West 
‘Branch 1, 17, 1807, and Center, 2, 7, 1807. The lat- 
ter was composed of. Center and Caesar’s Creek Pre- 


22 


paratives, and was held alternately at the two places 
except on one or two occasions, till Caesar’s Creek m. 
m. was opened, 5, 26, 1810. 

The boundaries of Caesar’s Creek and Center p. 
ms. (and the m. ms. were the same) — were recorded 
as follows: 

Ist., Caesar’s Creek—‘Beginning at John Haines” 
mill on the Miami, thence with the road towards Tods- 
fork as far as the 8-mile tree, thence northwardly. 
On the N. W. the Miami to its head, and onward in 
the same direction.” Was the mill of John Haines at 
Waynesville? If so the S. boundary coincided nearly 
with the present road from that place 8 miles toward 
Wilmington, the E. side was measurably parallel to the 
Miami, and the settlement of Friends near Old Town, 
and those on Massie’s Creek and at Green Plain, were 
included, as subsequent occurrences testified. 

2d—The boundary of Center m. m. was as fol- 
lows: “Beginning at Morgan Vanmeter’s and from 
thence with the road leading to Mad River.” This is 
all there is of it. I take it that the S. E. corner of the 
included territory was at Morgan Vanmeter’s. He 
was a very early settler in the county—Highland, quite 
early—now Clinton at that part—and lived just E. of 
Snow-Hill, across the creek, and about two miles N. 
W. of the present New Vienna. The place was well 
known in the early dats. Roads began there and ran 
in various directions—one “towards Mad River” as 
aforesaid, and one called “the College Township road,” 
through Cuba and near Clarksville, and on westward 
to the College Township in Butler county, and one 
“through Oakland and Waynesville in Warren coun- 
ty to Eaton in Preble county.” I suppose the south- 
ern boundary of the Center meeting was quite convex 
outwardly, so as to take in Springfield Friends in and 
near the valley of Todsfork as far as Clarksville, and 


23 { 


terminated, somehow, at “the 8-mile tree” aforesaid. 
The east side took in the Friends at Grassy Run, 
(Bloomington) and those of Seneca, (Jamestown), 
and must have terminated in an acute angle in the 
eastern boundary of Caesar’s Creek. 

9, 7, 1807, Redstone Q. M. as in the cases fore- 
going, established Fairfield, Clear Creek and Fall 
Creek ms. f. w., and granted Fairfield and Clear 
Creek p. ms. and Fairfield m.m. The Fairfield meet- 
ings were at or near the site of the present Fairfield 
meeting house, about 1 mile, nearly south, of Lees- 
burg aforesaid, except, that the m. m. alternated for a 
time, between that place and Clear Creek, near Sa- 
mantha. It was composed of the two p. ms. afore- 
said, of which Clear Creek was composed of Clear 
Creek and Fall Creek ms. f. w. The m. m. was 
opened .7, 18, 1807, and was the last m. m.—the 4th 
one—granted by Kedstone Q. M. in the original limits 
of mi msm. 

n 1807, upon the request of Miami, West Branch 
and cae m, ms. Redstone Q, M. presented to Bal- 
timore Y. M. their petition for a QO. M., and Miami 
QO. M.. wa accordingly ale in 1808, composed of 
said m. ms. and Fairficld m. m., which latter Had 
been established meanwhile, ahd the Q. M. was opened - 
at Waynesville, Ohio, 5, 13, 1809, Representatives on 
the part of the men being present from the m. ms. 
2s follows: 

Miami—TIsaac Pectiicle: Asher Brown, John 
- Stubbs, Nathan Stubbs. 

West Branch—Benjamin Iddings, William Nail, 
Jeremiah Mote, Isaac Embree and Samuel Peirce. 

Center—Jonathan Wright, Isaac Perkins, Samuel 
Spray, Henry Millhouse. ~ 

Fairfield—Josiah Tomlinson, Ennion Williams, 
Richard Barrett, Zebulov Overman. 


eee ee 


24 


-Before 1828 other Q. M.’s were set ep—viz> 

West Branch, set of irom Miami QO. M_ by Bal 
timore Y. M. m 1811, and opened at “West Branch” 
6, 13, 1812. 

Fairheld—Set of irom Mami Q ML by Olio 
VY. M. m 1814, and opened at “Famkeld~ Higbiand 
Co., Ghio, m T8i5. ; 

Whitewater—Set of irom West Brach QO. M_ 
and grammed by Ohio Y. M. m 18h and _opeunt: at 
Richmond, Ind, 1, 4, 1817. 


ia Garde Sa on from West Branch 2. M 
by Indiana Y. M. in 1822, and opened at New Ganden 
Imecing house near Newport, now Fouutam saa iIn- 

—_ > 


uaier O. Ms eae Y. M. im 1824, and ol 


VY. Nm 1825, and oped at Center, Ge GS 
13, 1826 
3: + 


more VY. M. ans aeael im cesta —< 1812, - 
opened ai Richmond, = 10; 8, isn 

~ ze oe - I 
by the same date set up, ail descendents, so to speak, 
of Miami m. m., and one was transferred from Staort 
sive 3 i Ciena order the names ok the thirty- 


Sve, following each by the dates of #s grant and open- 
ing so far as I have them, and the lime of @s ame 


- 25 


cedents, or ancestry, back to Miami m. m. then its lo- 
cation, and the name of the Q. M. which granted it, 
underscoring the latter in each case. 

1. Whitewater—8, 12, 1809—®, 30, 1809—West 
Branch, Miami. Richmond, Indiana— Miami. 

onl, a1, 3H, 180912, 2, 1809. One. step 
back to Miami. At or near West Elkton, Preble Co., 
O—Miami. 

3, Caesar’s Creek. 5. 12, 1810—5, 26, 1810. 
Center, Miami. On the N. W. side of Caesar’s Creek, 
about 7 miles E. of Waynesville —M tami. 

A> Mill ‘Creek. 2, 0, 181I—3, 23, 1811. West 
Branch, Miami. On Mill creek. in S. W. corner of 
Monroe Tp.. Miami Co.. O—Miami. 

5. Fall Creek (Ohio). 5, 11, 1811—6, 22. 1811. 
Fairheld, Miami. “On the waters of Paint,” near 
Rainsboro, Highland Co., O—Muiami. 

6. Darby Creek (Later Goshen).- It, 9, 18t1— 
I2, 21. r8i1. Cnestep to Miami. Near East Middle- 
burg, Zane Tp., Logan Co., O—Miami. 

7. Clear Creek. 15. 14. 1812—12, 24, 1812. 
Fairfield, Miami. Three-fourths of a mile westward 
_ of Samartha, Highland Co., O—Miamt, 

S. Union. 12, 3r2, 181a—r, 2. rz. West 
Branch, Miami. Near Ludlow Falls, Miami Co., O— 
_ Miami. 

g. Lick .Creek. 09, 11, r812—9, 25, ‘+F8I7. 
Whitewater, West Branch. Miami. Three miles S. E. 
of Paoli, Orange Co., Ind—West' Branch. 

to. New Garden. —, 3). BRS} Bers. 
Whitewater, West Branch, Stink Near Fountain 
City, Wavne Co., Ind—West Branch. 

It. Cincinnati. 2. 11, 1815—z. 16, r&ts. One 
step back to Miami. Cincinnati, Ohio —Miamt. 

12. Blue River. 6, to, r81s—7, r. 18t5. Lick 
Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. Two miles 


26 


N. E. of Salem. Washington Co., Ind.—West Branch. 

13. Newberrt (Ohio). 13 Be RE as Dp 
1816. Fairficki, Miami. “On lower East Fork,” 
or near present Martinsyjlle, Clinton Co., Fer. 
field. 

14. lees Creek: . 2557; 1817—3, 5,.1817- . Fair- 
field, Miami. N eyCas Lees creek, about one and a half 
miles N. W. of New Lexington (Highland P.O), 
Highland Co.. O.—Fairfield. 

15. Siiver Creek. —, —, 1817—5, 10, 1817. 
Whitewater, \West Branch, Miami. Two miles W. of 
Liberty, Unioa Co., Ind —IVhitewater. 

16. Alum Creck (Not a descendant of Miami m. 
m.). Opened ro, 30, 1817 under grant of Short-Creek 
Q. M. and transierred to Miami 2 M., which accepted 
it 8, 11, ee Ten miles S of Mt. Gilead and: four 
miles E ies Ashley, Morrow Co., O.—Shori Creek. 

17. Sac i eGSFOMG. 64— 2 1, at; Mies) 1818. 
Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. Three miles Na W. 
of Centerville, Wayne Co., Ind-—Il¥mtewater, — 

18.. Springficld (Ohic). 11, 14, E818—a2, oh. 
1818... Center. Miami. It alternated, after the first 
two or three micetines, between: Lytle’s Creek and 
Springfield. (pened at.Lytle’s Creek, and was com- 
posed..of :Lytie’s Creek. and. Carinesela p. ms. Lytle’s 
Creek, three and a half miles W. Soyo Wilming- 
ton, aad Springtield, on the N» W. bank of Todd's 
Fork, five and seven-eighth miles W. of Wag et 
both in Clinton Co., O. — Miemi. 

19." Se ence (Ind). ,—t =, i harSe0. 
New. Garden. \Whiitewater, West Branch, Misia “At 
er near Economy, Wayne Co., Ind.—Whitewater. ~ 

20.- Driftweod.. 7, 15, 18208, 20, 1820. Blue 
River, Lick Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. 
Eli Jay- locates it in Bartholomew Co., Ind.—Blue 

River. 


27 


-21.. Honey Creek. 7, 15, 1820—9, 9, 1820. Lick 
Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. E. Side of 
the Wabash, in Vigo Co., Ind., about seven miles 
southward of Terre Haute—Blue River. 

22. Cherry Grove. 4, 7, 1821—5, 9, 1821. New 
Garden, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. Three or 
four miles W. of Lynn, ten miles S of Winchester, Ran- 
dolph Co., Ind.—New Garden. 

2gy Greens Pla.) S,,, 11, >. 1821-9... 22) T82t. 
Caesar’s Creek, Center, Miami. One mile. N. of pres- 
ent Selma, Clark Co., O—Miamii. 

24. Westfield. 12, 8, 1821—12, 26, 1821. Elk, 
Miami. About three and one-fourth miles W. N. W. 
of Camden, Preble Co., O.—West Branch. 

25. Chester. —,—, 1823—a<, 23, 1823. White- 
water, West Branch, Miami. At Chester, four miles N. 
of Richmond Ind.—Whitewater. 

26. Milford. —, —, 1823—6, —, 1823. West 
Grove, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. Near Mil- 
ton Wayne Co. Ind.—IVhitewater. 

27. White Lick. 7, 19, 1823—8, 9, 1823. Lick 
Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. Jay says 
Mooresville, Morgan Co., Ind.—Blue River. 

28. White River. 1; 24, 1824—2, 7, 1824. 
‘Cherry Grove, New Garden, Whitewater, West 
Branch, Miami. One mile E. of Winchester, Ran- 
dolph Co., Ind—New Garden. 

29. Dover (Ohio). 8, 14, 1824—9, 4, 1824. 
Center, Miami. Four miles a little E. of N. of Wil- 
mington, Clinton Co., @.—Afianui. 

30. Springboro. 8, 14, 1824—9, 25, 1824. One 
step back to Miami. It alternated between Springboro 
and Sugar Creek and was composed of two p. ms. 
with those names, the latter one and one-fourth miles 
E. S. E. of Centerville, Montgomery Co., O., the for- 
mer at Springboro, Warren Co.—Miamu, 


28 


31. Duck Creek. —, —, 1826—7, by 1826, Mil- 
ford, West Grove, W hitewater, West Branch, Miami. 
At or near Greensboro, Henry Co., Ind.—IWhitewater. 

32. Fairfield (Ind). 7,.—4 "1826- —, —, 1826. 
White Lick, Lick Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, 
Miami. Eli Jay puts it in Morgan Co., Ind.—Blue 
River. 

33. Vermillion. 7, —, 1826—9, 2, 1826. Honey 
Creek, Lick Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. 
On Vermillion river, in Vermillion Co., Ills. a few 
miles southward of Danville—Blue River. 

34. Bloomfield. 7, —, 1827 —,—,——. Honey 
Creek, Lick Creek, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. 
At Bloomingdale, Ind—Alue River. 

iat os SARS 2, 20, 1828. New Gar- 
den, Whitewater, West Branch, Miami. In S. E. cor- 

ner of Randolph Co., Ind—New Garden. 

Beginning Ww ith Miami and continuing to about 
eighth month, 1828, there were, of indulged meetings, 
established ms. f. w. and p. ms., altogether about 
220 if I have not blundered in counting. 

Down to the same period the number of marriages 
accomplished under the care of the Mi. m. was 132. 

About 100 persons became mié ‘S on request 
and 175 were disowned, the latter chiefly for outgoing 
in marriage. 

I have very much more information ss jee 
the foregoing meetings, their subordinates ‘and their 
members, of their labors in the interest of good schools 
and in the causes of peace, sobriety, human rights and 
fair dealing, and of their benevolent work in behalf of 
the Indians and Negroes, matters worthy of mention, 
but the limits of this paper forbid more at this time. 


~ a beg an a? 
ay ar ss ie LIE One 


“HISTORY OF MIAMI MONTHLY MEETING 
“ FROM 1828 TO PRESENT TIME” (ORTHO- 
DOX.) 


ELI JAY, RICHMOND, INDIANA, 


The topic assigned me, “History of Friends Bo 
1828 to the Present Time — Orthodox,” is, I under- 
stand, intended to embrace such Friends as trace their 
church lineage, through one or many steps, to Miami 
Monthly Meeting, established at Waynesville, Ohio, 
one hundred years ago. _! shall therefore treat of the 
Friends, of the elas designated, who have resided, or 
are now living, west and north of the Hocking and 
Ohio rivers, and who are now embraced in. seven 
yearly meetings in the territory extending from these 
rivers to the Pacific coast. 

In the beginning of 1828 all the Friends, in these 
limits, belonged to one yearly meeting, Indiana, opened 
at Richmond, Ind., in tenth month, r82t. In the yea 
1827 its members numbered 1 3,945. They were 
grouped in eight quarterly meetings, subordinate to 
which were nearly forty monthly meetings, and al- 
most twice that number of meetings for worship. All 
these meetings were in southwestern Ohio, and east- 
ern and southern Indiana; four of the quarterly meet- 
ings and the larger part of another being in Ohio, a 
three and the smaller part of the other in Indiana. 

After the Separation in 1828 all these eight quar- 
terly meetings continued to report to the Indiana 
Yearly Meeting, of which I am to speak, though sev- 


eral of them with much reduced membership; and all 


are still prosperous quarterly meetings. About the 


30 


same may be said of the monthly meetings, just al- 
luded to, and, as far as I have information, not more 
than two or three were laid down as a result of the 
Separation, nearly all of them being active organiza- 
tions at the present time in the orthodox branch of the 
Friends. 

It is this body of the Friends thus constituted, at 
that time,.that I am to briefly trace the history of 
through the intervening three-quarters of a century. 
Let us first consider their growth and expansion as 
to organizations, locations, and numbers. Perhaps it 
will be best, for our present purpose, to follow the 
line of development in the quarterly meetings. The 
Grst addition made to the eight, existing in 1828, 
which were Miami, West Branch, Fairfield, White- 
water, Blue River, New Garden, Westfield and Centre, 
was White Lick set off from Blue River Quarterly 
Meeting, embracing Friends in west central Indiana 
and opened in 1831. The next was Alum Creék taken 
irom Miami for Friends principally in Logan and Mor- 
row counties, Ohio, in 1835. This quarterly meeting, 
on its own request, became attached to Ohio Yearly 
Meeting in 1856. 

Then in 1836 was the opening of Western, now 
Bloomingdale Quarterly Meeting, taken from the 
western part of White Lick. This was followed by the 
establishment of Spiceland Quarterly Meeting, at 
Spiceland, Ind., in the western part of Whitewater, in 
1840, and the next year, 1841, Northern, now Fair- 
mount, for the Friends in Grant county, Indiana, was 
set off from the northwest limits of New Garden Quar- 
terly Meeting. 

During the next seven years there was a great 
emigration of Friends to Jowa, and in 1848 Salem 
Quarterly Meeting, Henry county, Iowa, reckoned to 
be in the limits of Bloomingdale Quarterly Meeting, 


dl 


Indiana, was established. This was iollowed by the 
opening of Union Quarterly Meeting in Hamilton 
county, Indiana, set oif from White Lick, in 1849, and 
the establishment of Concord, now Vhoritown Quar- 
terly Meeting, in 1852, composed of monthly meet- 
ings from both Bloomingdale and Northern Quarterly 
Meetings. In 1854 a second quarterly meeting, Pleas-. 
ant Plain, was set i in Iowa, taken fron: Salem, fol- 
lowed in 1858 by the opening cr Red Cedar, now 
Springdale Quarterly Meeting, in Red Cedar county, 
Towa, taken also from Salem, and. in the same year 
Western Plain, now Bangor Quarterly Meeting, in 
Marshall county, Iowa, set off irom t'leasant Plain. 
This: made eighteen quarterly meetings in’ Indiana 
Yearly Meeting. But the five auarteriy meetings, 
Blue River, White Lick, Bloomineds tle, Union and 
Thorntown, had re He gee ‘for a vearly meeting of 
their own, which, after due investigation, being al- 
allowed by ndiana Yearly Meeting and approved by 
other yearly meetings, was opened at Ilainfield, Ind., 

in ninth month, 1858, with the name of W estern Year- 
ly Mecting...This left thirteen quarterly meetings in 
indiana Yearly Meeting. This number was increased 
by the establishment of South River, now Ackworth 
Quarterly Meeting, in Warren and Clark counties, 
Towa, in 1860, set off from Pleasant Plain; and in 1862 
the opening of Kansas Quarterly Meeting, now Spring- 
dale, composed of one monthly mecting belonging to 
Whitewater, Ind., and one belonging to Ackworth 
Ouarterly Meeting in Iowa. These fifteen quarterly 
meetings were reduced to ten by the opening of Iowa 
Yearly “Meeting i in ninth month, 1803, com: nosed of the 
five lowa quarterly meetings, Salem, leasant Plain, 
Bangor, Springdale and Ackworth, at Oskaloosa, 
Towa. 


To the ten quarterly mectings now left in In- 


32 


diana Yearly Meeting were added Wabash, taken from 
Northern Quarterly Meeting in 1865; Walnut Ridge. 
in Rush county, Indiana, in 1867, taken from Spice- 
land, followed by three quarterly meetings estab- 
lished in Kansas; Cottonwood opened in 1868, Spring 
River in 1869 and Hesper in 1870, and then Marion 
Quarterly Meeting in Grant county, Indiana, in 1872, 
taken from Northern or Fairmont Quarterly Meeting. 
In 1872, Kansas Yearly Meeting, the usual approval 
having been given, was also opened in the tenth month, 
at Lawrence, Kan., composed of the four Kansas 
quarterly meetings, Kansas or Springdale, Cotton- 
wood, Spring River and Hesper, with a “eprint 
of 2,500. 

Then followed the opening of the following quar- 
terly meetings in Indiana oe Meeting: Winches- 
ter, from New Garden in 1874; Vandalia, in southern 
Michigan i in 1887 from Wabash; Dublin, from White- 
water in 1888; Van Wert, at Van Wert, Ohio, from 
West Branch in 1889; Long Lake, now Traverse City, 
in northern Michigan, from Winchester, Ind., in 1892; 
and Eastern, by a division of Miami Quarterly Meet- 
ing, also established in 1892 to be opened in 1893, 
making eighteen quarterly meetings. 

In 1892, Wilmington Yearly Meeting was opened 
at Wilmington, Ohio, with the usual approval. It was 
composed of the three quarterly meetings, Miami, 
Fairfield and Centre, having a membership of over 
5,000. 

Indiana Yearly Meeting is, at present, composed 
of fifteen quarterly meetings, fifty-seven monthly 
meetings and 140 meetings for worship. It hasa 
membership of 20,483, being an average of 1,365 mem- 
bers to the quarterly meeting. 

Time forbids tracing the development of the four 
yearly meetings that have been set off from, and 


33 . 


established by, Indiana Yearly Meeting and the two 
established by Iowa Yearly Meeting. Suffice it to say 
that Western Yearly Meeting has a membership of 
15,230, in Indiana and Illinois, in sixteen quarterly 
meetings, the average to the quarter being 952; that 
Towa Yearly Meeting has a membership of 11,280 in 
Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska 
and Colorado, in eighteen quarterly meetings averag- 
ing 705 to the quarter; that Kansas has 11,214 mem- 
bers in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska in 
thirteen quarterly mectings, averaging 862 to the 
quarter; that Wilmington has 6,273. members in Ohio 
and East Tennessee in four quarterly meetings, aver- 
aging 1,568 to the quarter; and that of the two yearly 
meetings established by Iowa Yearly Meeting, Oregon 
opened at Newberg, Ore., in 1893, has 1,662 members 
in two quarterly meetings in that state, an average 
of 831 to the quarter; and that California Yearly 
Meeting, opened at Whittier, Cal., in 1895, has 1,890 
members in three quarterly meetings, an average of 
630 to the quarter. This gives a total, in the seven 
yearly meetings, of seventy-one quarterly meetings, 
with a membership of 68,032, an average of 958 to the 
quarter, that have, in this branch, grown from Miami 
Monthly Meeting in the one hundred years just closed. 

But mere numbers, in churches, whether of mem- 
bers or or ganizations, are of no great value. It is the 
Christian -spirit that is the essential thing. What we 
are the mo interested in knowing is, what have these 
thousands of Friends been doing the last seventy-five 
years that is worthy of record. Have they been ful- 
filling their high functions and discharging their sa- 
cred obligations as a branch of the Christian Church ? 


When the risen Christ stood on the Mount ‘of 
Olives, ready to ascend to His Father, He told His 


34: 


disciples inquiring concerning the coming of His 
kingdom, “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy 
Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses 
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and 
to the uttermost parts of the earth.” I think, it is the 
truth to say that this enduement of power has been, 
in a commendable degree, with this branch of Christ’s 
Church, and that in various ways, and according to 
their opportunities, the members have striven to wit- 
ness for Him. Under this anointing many devoted 
ministers have humbly stood in their allotted places, 
or gone forth under an apprehended call of the Mas- 
ter, to witness for Him according to their capacity or 
their mission. And men and women, with this qualify- 
ing power have, in all the walks of life, illustrated, in 
the family, in their business, and in whatever station 
they have been placed, the law of justice, obligation, 
duty, and righteousness, thus giving evidence that 
they have been with Jesus, by following in His steps. 

Meetings of worship have been regularly held 
throughout their limits in which the services, whether 
of the Spirit and in silence, or in vocal utterances, have 
been for the strengthening and encouragement of those 
attending; for the comfort and edification of those in 
distress and doubt; for the instruction and guidance 
of the ignorant and inexperienced, and for leading 
all into a fuller and better life, so that in humble de- 
pendence on the Heavenly Shepherd they have received 
the requisite qualifications for life’s duties and re- 
sponsibilities. Persons thus trained and disciplined 
come to esteem right living — righteousness and peace 
— more important than show and ceremony, and to, 
be true men and women, in the sphere in which they 
are moving, whether it be regarded as a lowly or an 
exalted one, as the proper aim of life. 

Those accustomed, like Friends, to believe in the 


35 


inspeaking voice of God in the soul, and in commun- 
ion with the Father of spirits, may be expected to be- 
come thoughtful for people in general, as well as 
themselves, to seek after the best conditions of living 
for humanity everywhere, and to have their hearts ex- 
panded by a measure of that universal love that en- 
ables them to greet all mankind as brothers. Such are 
the Lord’s freemen, whom the Son has made free, and 
are not slaves to prejudice, customs, or any narrowing, 
perverting things. The spirit of Christianity is the 
spirit of reform and improvement. No religious de- 
nomination has more fully exemplified the reform spirit 
than the Friends. Those who will carefully study the 
attitude of the Friends in regard to slavery, intemper- 
ance, and many other hurtful things will most cer- 
tainly be convinced that a progressive improving spirit 
‘ has always characterized them. Though generally re- 
garded as a very conservative body, they have always 
shown themselves able to adapt themselves to the 
changes and improvements called for by the times. 
Said one a long time ago, “The times have changed, 
and we have changed with them.” This, to a certain 
extent, is the law of our being. Hence it is not to be 
wondered at that the wonderful changes and improve- 
ments of the last seventy-five years, which we all exult 
in, have witnessed similar things in the Society of 
Friends and that in outward, surface things they do 
not seem to be as they were at the beginning of this 
period. Let us hope that amid all changes and fluc- 
tuations, in spirit and foundation prit nciples they have. 
not departed from the faith of the fathers. 

In addition to the regular church work of the. 
Friends, of whom I am speaking, in caring for their 
own household of faith and bringing others to Christ 
as the Savior of men, their efforts in other collateral 
work needs to be considered as an important part of 


36 


* vheir history. And first we may note their care for 
inferior races as the Indians and Negroes. The work 
for the Indians begun and carried on by Baltimore and 
Ohio Yearly Meetings in the early part of the last cen- 
tury passed into the hands of Indiana Yearly Meet- 
ing at its organization in 1821. This was principally 
with the Shawnees, near Wapakoneta, Ohio, and was 
continued by our branch after 1828. These Indians, 
removing west, to the then Missouri Territory, in 
1832 and 3, at their own request the work was resumed 
with them in their new home in 1837. It was con- 
tinued there more than thirty years, or until the Shaw- 
nees left Kansas and became incorporated with the 
Cherokees, by a school for the education of their chil- 
dren, and by such religious, social and economic in- 
struction as way opened for. 

When President Grant in 1869 offered Friends 
the care of many Indian tribes, under the govern- 
ment, the Central Superintendency was assigned to 
Friends of our branch. The western Friends all 
joined heartily in the work, and all the nine agents ap- 
pointed were from the western yearly meetings. 
When later Friends withdrew from their connection 
with the government, they still retained religious, mis- 
Sionary and educative work with some of the small 
tribes in Indian and Oklahoma Territories. At pres- 
ent they support ten mission stations amongst these 
Indians at their own expense. In:all this work our 
Friends in the West have done their full share, and 
furnished most of the active workers in the field. 

The care of the colored people has always been 
a marked feature of our Friends’ work. Committees 
of the yearly and quarterly meetings had general 
care of those in their limits, including the education 
of their children, and their protection from the injus- 
ttice they were subject to, on account of their color. 


37 


So successful were their labors that the committee of 
Indiana Yearly Meetings in 1863, which then included 
_ all the West, except Western Yearly Meeting, reported 
“That few or any colored children i in their limits were 
without literary instruction.” 

At that time their work, under changed condi- 
tions, assumed a new character. The progress of the 
federal armies in our great civil war in the Missis- 
sippi valley had brought thousands of “Freedmen” into: 
their lines, and in their destitute condition appeals 
were made to the benevolence of the North to come to: 
their relief. Governor Oliver P. Morton made a 
special, personal request to the Friends in Indiana 
to take up this work and give the needed assist- 
ance. Prompt response was made by Indiana 
Yearly Meeting. A judicious committee was appsint- 
ed to have charge of the work. Large contributions of 
money and needed supplies came in for the work, and 
many agents were sent to look after the welfare of 
these refugees. For several years this committee dis- 
bursed large sums of money and needed supplies 
through their agents in the field. As soon as their 
physical necessities were relieved, attention was given 
to schools and orphans’ asylums amongst them. 
Lauderdale, Miss., and Little Rock and Helena, Ark., 
were the principal centers of the work. Later on 
Friends’ work was carried on in connection with the 
Freedmen’s Bureau to some extent. Their efforts 
finally centered near Helena, Ark., principally on land 
nine miles northwest of that city, which was donated 
for the purpose by a regiment of United States col- 
ored -soldiers stationed at Helena, and in buildings 
which the soldiers erected on the premises. It was 
first an orphan asylum, but soon became a school, 
which character it still continues, largely ea in 
educating teachers for colored schools in the South, 


’ 38 


having the name of Southland College, and is under 
the control of Friends of Indiana Yearly Meeting. It 
has an endowment of $35,000, $25,000 of which was 
given by an English Friend named George Sturge. 
Other yearly meétings have had work amongst the 
colored people in other locations. 

In the settling of Friends in the West they gave 
early attention to the education of their children and 
the support of schools, good for that time. Usually 
the school house stood near the meeting house, and 
though it might be a log structure, it was well patron- - 
ized ‘by others as well as Friends. Before the days of 
free public education, these Friends’ schools were of 
great service in their respective neighborhoods. Many 
of them furnished opportunity for more advanced edu- 
cation for those desiring it, and later became academies 
ef considerable note and usefulness. Many such acad- 
emies are still found in Indiana, lowa and Kansas: 


In addition to these there are now six colleges 
under the care of the seven yearly meetings before 
mentioned. Several of these are well established in- 
stitutions and well equipped for their «work as small 
colleges. Others were later in becoming established, 
but give promise of a successful career. There are 
probabl y more than 1,000 students now attending 
these colleges, mostly doing work in a college course, 
and I believe all have some endowment. 


In all these yearly meetings the Friends are well 
erganized in Bible schools on the first day of the week, 
which are well attended. They are doing much work 
in home mission lines among the destitute and unfor- 
tunate, visiting prisons, jails and county asylums for 
the help and encouragement of the inmates. 

All these yearly meetings are engaged in for- 
eign mission work, the fields of their operations be- 


39 


: 


ing in Mexico, Alaska, Jamaica, Cuba, Palestine, 
Japan, India and Africa. 

Much attention has been given by the Friends in 
these yearly meetings to the proper care of unfor- 
tunates and criminals amongst us, in the establish- 
-ment of asylums, and in prison reform. Committees 
appointed for that purpose have done much valuable 
work in calling the attention of legislators and state 
officials to the need of reform schools for juvenile 
offenders, for the separation of the sexes in prisons 
and for rational and humane treatment of criminals 
in our penitentiaries. This is especially true in the state 
of Indiana, and, I doubt not, in some degree in other 
states where many Friends reside. ; 

Many other matters of history might be mentioned 
in this connection, but time forbids. 

Much might be said of the faults and shortcom- 
ings of this branch of the Friends. In the democratic 
constitution of Quakerism the authority rests in the 
whole membership. And the perfection of government 
is attained when what is done is the free and enlight- 
ened judgment of the whole, as near as possible. But 
when those occupying the position of leaders seek 
to carry measures by schemes and devices some- 
times characterized as ““wireworking,” and press meth- 
ods and changes, prematurely and unduly, the har- 
mony of the society is often much marred, and its 
true life confused and deadened. In such ways 
changes have been brought about with injurious re- 
sults. Persons of clear convictions and sound judg- 
ment have yielded to assumed authority rather than 
appear in opposition, while others who have not been 
able to fall in line have been set aside, because their 
convictions and judgments have not been sufficiently 
pliable. Hence there have come weakening of interest 
in the work of the Church and a tendency towards 


40 


withdrawals, divisions and separations, and it has be- 
come painfully evident that changes do not always 1 in- 
dicate true progress. 

Leaders of course there will always be, those 
whose superior ability and purity of character qualify 
them to guide and control. This branch of the. 
Friends has had many such in the last seventy-five 
years, men and women who have held their positions 
by wisely and properly enlightening the understand- 
ings of associates, and thus influencing their action. 
Such are worthy of double honor. 


_ The time for dinner having arrived, the last paper 
on the morning program was deferred until the after- 
noon. All in attendance were requested to register 
their names and addresses. Luncheon was served in 
the meeting house on the opposite side of the road, for 
which a nominal sum of 20 cents was charged. This 
was made possible because of the volunteer service of 
many young people, whose pleasant and cheerful min- 
istrations contributed much to the success of the under- 
taking. The Presiding: Officer, Seth H. Ellis, encour- 
aged all to make good use of the noon hour in promot- 
ing all possible sociability. At one-thirty P. M., he 
called the Assembly to order and spoke as follows: 

“JT find it incumbent upon me to make a few re- 
marks by way of welcome. We certainly, all of us, 
heartily welcome our home people who have left their 
homes and come in this morning, and all who have 
. come from a distance to the old Mother-Church of 
Quakerism for all this country. Some of you are here 
for the first time for a great many years. 

“Tn thinking over this matter, knowing that I had 
been asked to say a few words, I thought I would 
speak to some who could remember awa y back in the 
years gone by, when they were children here, little 
boys or girls, coming to this house or the one on the 
other knoll, with father and mother to meetings which 
were so richly enjoyed. We welcome you back to 
those early memories of childhood. Some of you have 
been told of this meeting place: 

“¢ We have heard father and mother in their wes- 
tern homes, tell of the times when they used to come to 
meeting at Waynesville —and you are glad to come to 
this place of which your parents have told you of the 


# 


42 


meetings. You have taken occasion to come back and 
renew the old time feeling. Some of you left in 
young manhood and womanhood and went to the 
West, and became involved in the business of life, 
and you have to some extent, lost that child-like feel- 
ing which you used to have when you came with father 
and mother. You have felt glad to get back, and have 
the old memories of childhood renewed. We welcome 
you back to those associations. ,We are glad to wel- 
come you to the trusting simple faith of your child- 
hood days, that you had almost lost. It is our earnest 
desire that it may be made a time of great spiritual up- 
lift. We trust that every one feels glad to be here, 
and I suppose every one does feel heartily glad to be 
present, and you may rest assured that the home people 
are glad you are here. 

“May the Lord bless us and give us a good time 
that we will remember all the rest of our lives.” 


HISTORY OF MIAMI MONTHLY MEETING 
HICKSITE — FROM 1828 TO 1903. 


(DAVIS FURNAS, WAYNESVILLE, OHIO.) 


’ In giving a history of Miami Monthly Meeting 
it seems fitting to commence with a list of those who 
held important offices from 1828 to the present time. 

The list of names will recall to memory many 
who were well known and stood high in the com- 
munity, but are now almost forgotten. 

From the records I learn that David Evans was 
clerk of said meeting in 1828. Then followed in the 
order given: Daniel Kinley, Samuel Silver, Jason 
Evans, James M. Janney, David Evans, George Bar- 
rett, David Evans, James M. Janney, Jesse T. But- 
terworth, James M. Janney, Jesse T. Butterworth, 
Davis Furnas, Aaron B. Chandler, Clarkson Butter- 
worth and Aaron B. Chandler. 

The following list of Elders includes the names of 
many valued friends: Amos Cook, James Hollings- 
worth, Thomas Bispham, David Macy, Samuel Gause, 
Mary Gause, Frederic Kinley, Moorman Butterworth, 
Elizabeth Satterthwaite, Sarah Macy, Abigail Cleaver, 
David Brown, Ruth Cook, Hannah Lukens, Rebecca 
Strattan, Noah Haines, David Brown, Edward Hat- 
tan, Rachel Hattan, Hannah L. Butterworth, James 
-M. Janney, Anna Haines, Eliza Pennington, Solomon 
Gause, David Chandler, Mary Hinchman, Seth Fur- 
nas, Elizabeth Burnett, Fanny Butterwerth, J. Wood- 
tow Warner, Mahala Warner, Sarah Jane Chandler, 
Jesse T. Butterworth, Elizabeth A. Davis, Lydia E. 
Daniels, Zephaniah Underwood, Jabez Thorpe, 


44 


Stephen Burnet, Anna Kelly, Clarkson Gause, Mary 
Cook, Clarkson Butterworth, Thomas L. Frame, Eliz- 
abeth Frame, Elizabeth B. Moore, Elihu Underwood, 
Rebecca Daniels, Franklin Packer, Elizabeth G. 
Packer. 

Overseers were appointed in order, beginning 
with Noah Haines and followed by a long list of 
names of members for that office. 

Abram Cook and Margaret Kinley were the only 
recorded ministers in 1828 and there haye been ten 
others in the Monthly Meeting laboring as they be- 
lieved truth directed. 

The above gives the working order in a general 
way during the past seventy-five years. 

I will now endeavor to give a more particular 
description of the meeting as T have known it during 
sixty- ve years, as I have been a constant attender 
during that time. My parents took me to meeting 
regularly during my childhood. My personal recol- 
lection goes back to about 1837. Then the gallery 
seats were well filled on both sides of the aisle, the 
men on one side and the women on the other, and 
during all that time — seventy-five years — meetings 
have been held without omission twice a week, and I 
have learned they were similarly held from 1803 to 
1828, so that for one hundred years the, members of 
Miami Menth! ly meeting have met twice a week for 
social worship. 

The elder members were the O’Heals, Kellys, 
Cooks, Gauses, Browns, Evans, Kinleys, Whartons, 
Mills, Satterthwaites, Brelsfords, Strahls, Haines, 
Chapmans, Harveys, Wards, Chandlers and Barnetts. 

As I remember those of sixty-five years ago they 
were scrupulously exact in dress. and language. 
They claimed that the peculiar dress of that day was, 
to say the least, a partial safeguard to these who were 


45 


thus attired; that they would not indulge so frecly 
in questionable practices as if they were not. known 
by their dress and language to be Friends with the 
reputation of being sober and orderly citizens. 

Any departure in dress or ee S was caise for 
concern and care and if the departure was persisted 
in the overseers visited them. There was no com- 
promising with misdeeds of any kind. 

All marriages were to be soiemnized according to 
the order-laid down in the discipline and if a Friend 
selected a companion who was not a member and 
was married other than by consent of the meeting, 
he must either acknowledge that he was sorry he had 
violated the order cr be disowned, and members were 
also testified against for many other irregularities 
that were considered innovations. It seems to us of 
the present time a great loss to the society. In the 
‘course of time the rigid enforcement of the Discipline 
was somewhat abated and more Biostar) shown to 
those who stepped a little aside from thé sirict cb- 
servance of the letter. 

“As the years rolled on many of the worthies 
passed into the great Beyond and some moved away 
until the members of the meeting following 1828 are 
all gone- and many of their descen :dants, with the 
spirit oi adventure prevaient among them, have gone 
to “different paris and they may be found in almost 
every state between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans 

“Many have lost the zeal of their fathers and 
have adopted the customs and manners of those with 
whom they associate. .They have not time, as they 
express it, with all their modern conveniences and 
conuorts, to attend meeting and participate in re- 
ligious work as their ancestors with all their hardships 
and inconveniences did. : 

I have called the fathers worthies, because I do 


“ 


46 


not believe I ever knew, and I doubt if there ever 
was a greater number of persons associated together 
who were more zealous for the right, and who said to 
the world of mankind by their ‘dress and language, 
lives and customs, we are Friends. About 1865 this 
meeting house, which was built in I81I, was re- 
modeled and made more modern in appearance, and 
at that time a First day school was established and 
has continued without intermission, except about three 
months during the winter of 1878, to the present time. 
During the days of slavery the meeting was inter- 
estetl in the education and betterment of the free 
colored people and they also gave assistance in various 
ways to the Indians. They still help maintain two 
colored schools in the South and are doing what op- 
portunity offers for the Indians. 

They have been laboring all these years in the 
cause of temperance and reform and for peace and 
arbitration in the place of war and bloodshed. 

But the zeal of the fathers does not seem to have 
descended to the children in the fullness. Many have 
become interested in other organizations, and have 
thereby lost their allegiance to much that their fathers 
labored for. 

A pen picture of the older members as they sat in 
meeting, if faithfully given, would be interesting and 
you will parden me if I make the attempt. y 

My recollection when about ten years old was 
of well filled galleries where the men all. dressed in 
the regular style adopted by Friends of that day, 
with their broad-brimmed hats on their heads dur- 
ing all the meeting hour, except when a minister arose 
to speak he laid his hat aside until he had delivered 
his discourse; and the women with their uniform style” 
of bonnets and dress sat religiously quiet, except when 
one of them was exercised in the ministry she always. 


47. 


removed her bonnet. When any one appeared in 
supplication the whole congregation arose and re- 
‘mained standing, the men turning their backs to the 
suppliant and removing their hats until the prayer was 
ended. 

' The custom of rising in time of prayer was aban- 
doned some’ twenty-five or thirty years ago. The 
dress of the elderly Friends was very uniform and 
as they sat in their usual places they certainly made 
a very interesting sight. 

In conversation they were equally particular. 
One would never hear the expression, as we sote- 
times now hear it, we had a good meeting last Sabbath 
or Sunday. It would be last F irst-day, or else some 
one would feel a concern that our testimonies were 
being compromised in regard to plainness of speech. 

Later, Friends have taken a somewhat different 
course believing more in the spirit than in the form. 
Yet the query is pertinent, is fidelity to truth and duty 
as zealously adhered to as it was by our forefathers. 

My thoughts go back to the customs of: those 
early days. I remember when there were no buggies’ 
for persons to ride in. The young men and women 
did not go buggy riding but they did go to meeting. 
How did they get there? Most of them went on 

horseback and some on foot. Well do I remember an 
old Friend who went regularly to meeting on horse- 
back till he was past ninety years of age. 

Some of the elder ones had carriages, or what 
they called carriages, no springs under the beds. We 
of to-day would call them jolt wagons, but they al- 
ways found their way to meeting at a ‘time, too, 
when the roads at certain seasons of. the year were 
well nigh impassible; and they had a great deal of 
heavy work to do at home clearing away the forest 
with no labor saving machines as we have now. 


48 


One of the customs of those early days among 
the Friends if they~had hired help was, when meeting 
day came in the middle of the week for all hands to 
quit work, saddle their horses and all go to meeting 
together. No time lost by the hired help. 

There were hitching racks erected all over the lot 
where and above where the sheds are located at this 
time and I have seen hundreds of horses hitched to 
them on quarterly meeting days. Couples would come 
riding together each on a horse, and sometimes two 
on one horse. I have seen twenty or thirty couple 
in procession, all enjoying themselves. 

If perchance tne young lady rode to meeting 
alone it was the custom for some of the young men 
present to take her horse and hitch it, and after 
meeting he would bring it to the mounting place, 
and generally his own also, and after seeing her 
properly seated in the saddle he would accompany 
her home, merely for company you know. In my 
younger days the boys from five to fifteen years of 
age and sometimes older went to meeting in the sum- 
mer time clad in homespun linen and barefoot, and 
what of them. Changing the words of Burns a very 
little we may say that 

“Burdly chiels and clever hizzies 
Were reared in such a way as this is.’ 

Looking back over a period of sixty-five years 
and noting the changes in everything, but more es- 
pecially in the members of Miami Monthly Meeting 
the query arises, are we of to-day with all the ad- 
vantages of the present time, doing our work in a 
spiritual way better than did those of the primitive 
days and customs. 


r 


, 


“WHAT QUAKERISM HAS DONE FOR THE 
RECOGNITION OF WOMEN.” 


MARY BATTIN BOONE, RICHMOND, IND. 
[Read by George R. Thorpe.]} 


The history of women entered a new era with 
the rise of the Society of Friends, for they. formed 
for themselves that which no other body of women 
had,—a public character. 

From earliest ages women had been-held in low 
esteem, various reasons being assigned for placing 
them on a plane inferior to men. 

Three events in the history of Europe added im- 
portance to womankind, and paved the way for the 
recognition of their social, intellectual and business 
equality: The introduction of Chivalry made their . 
physical welfare the care of men; weakness must be 
protected, and honor and humanity .were character- 
istics of this institution. With the Revival of Learn- 
ing came recognition of their mental abilities, and 
greater educational advantages were gradually per- 
mitted. Most important, was the introduction of 
Christian religion; “since all were equally account- 
able for their own actions, and God was no respecter 
of persons, so all, whether men or women, were of 
equal importance in his sight.” By the abolition of 
polygamy women became the companions instead. of 
the slaves of men. 

Though Christianity did much for the elevation 
of women, it remained for the Friends as a religious 
body “to insist upon that full practical treatment and 


50 


estimaiion of them which ought to take place wherever 
Christianity is professed.” 

It was believed that the women of the Society 
- had adequate capacities, and were capable of great 
usefulness, especially in the oversight of their own 
sex, therefore they were given a share in the ad- 
ministration of almost all the offices. One historian 
says: “No Church since the days of the Apostles 
has allowed them such great freedom in the Gospel, 
as has been allowed by Friends. Under their system 
all are equal, and Quaker women have repaid this 
greater liberty with an unsurpassed zeal and devotion.” 

George Fox wrote in his Journal: “God saw a 
service for the assemblies of women in the time of 
the law, about those things that appertained to His 
worship, and service, and to the holy things of his 
tabernacle; and so they in his Spirit see now their 
service in the gospel; many things in these meetings 
being more proper for the women than the men, and 
they in the power and wisdom of God may inform the 
men of such things as are not proper for them. For 
in the time of the law the women were to offer as well 
as the men; so in the time of the gospel much more 
are they to offer their spiritual sacrifices; for they are 
all called, both men and women, and all things that 
they do are to be done in the power of God.” 

When in 1666 George Fox was released after 
three years’ imprisonment, he found the Society had 
greatly increased in numbers, and was in need of a 
closer organization; quarterly meetings had been es- 
tablished, and at least two Yearly Meetings, or Gen- 
eral Assemblies held; the first Yearly Meeting was 
for religious purposes, the second one for business, 
and was attended by men only. From county to 
county George Fox traveled “setting up” monthly 
meetings for men and women “to take care of God’s 


51. 


glory, and to admonish and exhort such as walked 
disorderly or carelessly and not according to truth.” 
In 1673 and again in '77 reference is made in Fox’s. 
Journal to the opposition to Women’s meetings >. 
women preachers were tolerated, since no man could. 
tell through what channel the Lord might speak, and 
there was Scriptural precedence, but these dissenters 
denied any precedence for women’s meetings; the 
earnest convictions of their leader finally prevailed, 
and when the Society became fully organized, women,, 
the Same as men, held Monthly and Quarterly meet-- 
ings for the transaction of business, and were ap— 
pointed elders and overseers; they were not, however, 
appointed as correspondents, arbitrators, legislators 
or on committees of appeal. 


Wherever the Spirit led, they followed, though 
they suffered privations, imprisonment, severe punish- 
ment and even death. 

Mary Fisher went alone from England to Ad- 
rianople to deliver a message to Sultan Mohammed,, 
refused his offer of an escort and returned in safety. 
Anne Whitehead walked two hundred miles to the 
prison where George Fox and others were confined 
that she might minister to their wants. Rebecca 
Travers was “another important minister, and one of 
the first appointed by the Society to care for the poor 
and afflicted. 

_ The picture of ignorant, wretched women, with- 
out care for the present or hope for the futtre is called 
to mind by the name of Elizabeth Fry, through whose 
influence prison reformation was instituted. We need 
not repeat the story of Mary Dyar the only woman 
who suffered martyrdom in the United States. The 
number of women ministers was not large, but many 
more went about visiting the sick, and imprisoned, 


. + ae i 


reg. 


52 
distributing Friends’ books and watching over the 


women of the congregation. 

“The execution of these public offices could not 
but have an important influence on their minds. It 
imparted to them a considerable knowledge of human 
nature. It produced in them thought, foresight and 
judgment. It created in them a care and concern 
for the distressed. It elevated their ideas. It raised 
in them a sense of their own dignity and importance 

s human beings, which sets them above 
at is little and trifling, and above all idle parade 
and show. 

“Their pursuits are rational, useful and digni- 
fied; and they may be said in general to exhibit 
2 model for the employment of time worthy of the 
character they profess.” 

So wrote Thomas Clarkson nearly a century ago. 

If a review oi the past have no other effect, may 
lead us to pause and consider whether we of the 
present generation are following that high ideal of 
character which was formed by our Quaker ancestors, 
wnao suffered and died for the principles which we 
now enjoy in peace and harmony. 


“QUAKERISM AND SLAVERY.” 
MAY PEMBERTON, ‘west MILTON, OHIO. 


(This paper was not submitted for publication.) 


“QUAKERISM AND THE ORDINANCES.” 


DR. ROBERT E. PRETLOW, WILMINGTON, OHIO. 


Quakerism was an insurrection against the bond- 
age of externals. It was a reyolution turning men’s 
hearts from systems back to sources.. It had in it 
the germs of the highest democracy. It proclaimed 
the equality of-all men before God; and so did away 
with the special privileges of kingcraft and hierarchy. 
It leveled. But it did not drag down the king nor 
degrade the priest. It leveled by elevating men up to 
the ievel of kingship and priesthood — the high level 
where men may walk erect in the glad consciousness 
that they are the sons of God. 

This elevation and emancipation of the individual 
has had many marked effects upon conduct in civil and 
religious life, but scarcely oné which is more remarked 
upon, and for which the Quaker is oftener called upon 
to give his reasons than his attitude toward the so- 
called ordinances. 

The ritualist points out to him that ever since 
Christ was baptised of John in Jordan water baptism 
has been practiced. The Quaker yields the point and 
setae admits that it had been in vogue as a part of 

he Jewish ritual for fourteen centuries before John. 
The ritualist insists that the breaking of bread and 
passing of the cup has continued since that supper in 
the upper chamber. The Quaker grants his conten- 
tion and follows its antiquity back to the early de- 
velopment of the passover supper. 

But the early Quaker had the uncomfortable habit 
of asking himself and other people serious questions. 


54 


He had no more reverence for mere tradition than had 
‘his Master, the Man of Galilee. (Would his modern 
child were so). It was not enough for him that a 
thing existed. Ought it to exist? On what was it 
based? What was its purpose? What its effect? 

Rome had already broken down under the weight 
-of its own fritualism. The Reformation under 
-Luther, and Zwingli, and Calvin had come. They 
“had left the Romish church and most of the mass of 
‘ritual which it had preserved and created. But, like 
Rachel fleeing from the house of Laban, they brought 
with them in their exodus, some of the gods of the 
old order. They still insist on the priestly office, to- 
gether with water baptism and the sacramental supper 
administered by priestly hands. 

The fundamental Quaker doctrine of the priest- 
hood of all believers made necessary a thorough re- 
examination of the grounds on which ordinances 
rested. Is the contention of the ritualist sound that 
they rest on commands of Christ? The Protestant 
churches are poor in ordinances as compared with 
Rome. But one beside water baptism and the supper 
chas found foothold (and that but slight) among them 
——i. e. the custom of ceremonial foot washing. 

A moment’s consideration may be given this, chiefly 
‘for the light it may throw upon the others. (Jno. 
MUI. 12-15). “So when he had washed their 
feet, and taken his garments and sat down again, he 
said unto them, know ye what I have done unto you? 
“Ye call me Teacher, and Lord, and ye say well; for © 
“so Iam. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher have 
‘washed your feet ye also ought to wash one another's 
“feet. For I have given you an example that ye also 
should do as I have done to you.” Nothing could 
‘seem clearer or more mandatory if mere form has any 
wilace in Christianity. Yet with the exception of a 


55 


few insignificant denominations the whole Christian 
world agrees with the Quaker interpretation that it is 
not the specific act, but the spirit manifested that 
is mandatory. Not so great weight of scriptural au- 
_ thority, and that from Christ himself, can be cited for 
any other observance; yet none of the great historic 
churches incorporate it into their systems. 

Why should it not have equal place with baptism 
and the supper? First. It was not a custom in gen- 
eral use at the time of Christ and did not have the 
weight of tradition behind it to give it sanction. Sec- 
ond. In its tendency it was thoroughly democratic, 
and did not !end itself to the designs of a ruling 
priestly class to perpetuate their power. We can only 
remark in passing that sacred mysteries have always 
been the most potent means, in the hands of the priest- 
hood, of holding the masses under control. This ex- 
plains much of dogma and of history. 

Surely, if ordinances in the hands of a man are to 
determine the fact or character of our spiritual life the 
authority for those ordinances should be unassailable. 
lf they are to be obligatory on the Christian church it 
must be shown that they are definitely commanded by 
Christ, or that they have in themselves a saving moral 
quality. 

Are they commanded? What does Jesus say 
about baptism? (Mark 10:38-40)—Are ye able to 
drink of the cup that I drink? or to be baptised with 
the baptism that I am baptised with? * * And 
Jesus said unto them the cup that I drink ye shall 
drink, and with the baptism that I am baptized withal 
shall ye be baptized.” This was !ong after the baptism 
of John and yet it is spoken of as existing and future. 
(Mark 16-16)—“He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be con- 
demned.” (Matt 28-19) “Go ye therefore and 


56 


make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into 
the name of the Father, and the Son and the Hols 
Spirit.” (Acts 1-5) “For John indeed baptized wi 
water but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not 
many days hence.” (Acts 11-16) Peter quotes above. 
Three of these cannot refer to water as Christ’s bap- 
tism, and in the other two it need not. Christ never 
used the word baptism where it must imply water, 
nowhere save in Matt. 28-19 and Mark 16-16 where 
it could by any possibility mean water, and nowhere 
where a spiritual interpretation is not the most obvious 
and natural. 

John Baptist contrasted his baptism with that of 
Christ. (Matt. 3-11) “I indeed baptize you in water 
unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is 
mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to 
bear; he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in 
fire.” So important is this contrast that all four of 
the gospels record it. 

According to scriptural authority, Christian bap- 
tism is not material but spiritual, This baptism of 
the Spirit, as the Quaker understands it, is not so 
much an act as a state. It is in the present tense. 
When Jesus speaks of the essentials of salvation it is 
in the present tense. He that believeth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved. Not he that has confessed and 
has been baptized. So also Peter speaking of the 
true baptism (not the putting away of the filth of the 
flesh) says that it doth now save us. The baptism 
then is continuous and progressive. There is no. 
spiritual life save as under the baptism of the Spirit 
our lives are hid with Christ in God. Because we are 
baptized into the name of Christ we have our justifi- 
cation. Because we abide in Him and the baptismal 
power of the Spirit continues to work in us we have 
our sanctification. Because through belief and bap- 


57 


f 


tism there has been born in us the new life, which js 
none other than the life of Christ in the soul, we grow 
in grace and bring forth first the blade, then the ear, 
then the full corn in the ear. And all this not be- 
cause we have been baptized, but because we are bap- 
tized. 

So the Quaker, because he finds his sufficiency in 
the immediately imparted spiritual reality, and be- 
cause he finds no scriptural warrants for the contin- 
uance of the rite discards the ordinance of baptism. 

Is there any better foundation for the ceremonial 
observance of the supper? There are five narratives 
of the last supper of Jesus with his disciples. Each of 
the four evangelists records it; as does also Paul in 
I. Cor. XI., Matthew, Mark and John give absolutely 
no hint of any injunction for a continued observance. 
The last two clauses of Luke XXIIL-19 and all of 
verse 20 are in the practically agreed view of scholars 
a later interpolation. The accounts of Matthew and 
Mark read rather like a valedicitory than an introduc- 
tion. So every vestige cf command fades from th 
gospels, and the scle authority left is the passage from 
Paul. Even this seems to be permissive and tempor- 
ary as to observance rather than mandatory and per- 
manent. This view is still further emphasized by the 
fact that John who wrote after the fall of Jerusalem is 
utterly silent as to the ceremonial featurcs of the feast. 

Much light is thrown upon the subject, however, 
both by a study of Paul, and by the words of Jesus 
himself. 

One of the two pre-eminent ideas in all Paul’s 
teachings is thet of fellowship; fellowship with Christ, 
and with each other in His spirit. The word “fellow- 
ship” is used more by Paul than in all the rest of the 
Bible. His writings overflow with the idea. A sin 
against fellowship is, in his eyes, a cardinal sin. In 


58 


the light of this fact let us examine the occasion of his 
writing con the subject of the supper. The simple fel- 
lowship meal which had been the spontaneous expres- 
sion of brotherhood in the early church had degener- 
ated at Corinth into a riot of individualism. Gluttony 
and want were side by side. Each partook before 
others of his own supply, regardless of his brother’s 
want, in flagrant violation of the spirit of fellowship. 
Here is what Paul denounces: “He that eateth and 
drinketh eateth and drinketh judgment to himself if 
he discern not the body.”” But what is the bedy? Again 
let Paul answer, “We are one bread, one body.” Paul 
was evidently net concerned about the sanctity of a 
ritual, nor the lack of reverence for the elements of the 
eucharist, but about the existence within the church of 
cliques, and clans, and parties, and selfishness that 
nilitates against fellowship. 

It is one of the ironies of history that this effort 
of the great anti-ritualistic apostle to put a check to 
disorderly and unbecoming conduct should be made 
the sole foundation for the greatest mystery ceremonial 
of ali the ordinances of the historic church. 


But the words of Christ are clearer still on that 
occasion at Capernaum when His disciples were per- 
plexed over [His statement, “Except ye eat the flesh of 
the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life 
in you.” He removed all possible reference to rite or 
ceremonial. “Doth this cause you to stumble? It is 
the Spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing; 
the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are 
hife, 

By the words of Christ himself we are shut up to 
a spiritual interpretation. The material and the ritual- 
istic are excluded. Quakerism then reverts to the phi- 
losophy of Jesus and of Paul and sees in Love the life- 


59 


giving blood of her Lordjand in Fellowship His Spirit 
embodied. 

But why, accepting this high spiritual iaterpreia- 
tion, and granting that these rites have no stfiicient 
warrant in Scripture, should we not with others retain 
them as time-honored customs? Because they not 
only lack Scriptural warrant, but are at variance with 
the whole Quaker philosophy. Paul had to face the 
same problem among the churches of Galatia, and in 
the vehemence of his conviction wrote: “If ye receive 
circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing. Yea, I 
testify to every man that receiveth circumcision that 
he is a debtor to do the whole law. Ye are severed 
from Christ ye who would be justified by the law. Ye 
are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit by 
faith wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ 
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircum- 
cision, but faith working through love.” The whole 
question of ritual was here inv ‘olved. The Christian 
religion is a religion of moral te) spiritual power 
There is no moral or spiritual quality in ritual. De- 
pendence upon that which has no moral quality severs 
from Christ. It not only fails to save, but in so far as 
emphasis is laid upen it, it actually erects a barrier 
against the powers of salvation. 

Quakerism protests against the ordinances, not 
that in themselves they are immoral or irreligious, but 
that they are unmoral and wnreligious. The teach- 
ing of a rite tends to content the mind with the outward 
observance, and obscure from the hungering and thirst- 
ing soul the boundless wealth of the spiritual experi- 
ence. But Quakerism was not and is not a mere nega- 
tion. It is a bold a: nd unequivocal proclamation of the 
spiritual kingdom of God, unencumbered and unob- 
scured by the owtworn ceremonies of dead systems 

In the entire disuse of ordinances Fox and his fel- 


~ 


60 


low-workers completed the work begun by Luther and! 
his coadjutors; and made the longest forward step in 
the religious history cf Christendom. They exhibited. 
the nearest approach to a realization of the philosophy 
oi Jesus Christ which nineteen centuries have seen. 
hat we have sometimes sought to form a ritual. 

of our own, and taught as religion the cut of the coat, 
the style of the bonnet, the use of certain grammatical, © 
or ungrammatical forms, and abstinence from the joy— 
ous expression cf our souls in song, but illustrates the 
constant tendency of humanity to content itself on 
lower planes, and make to itself Gods on its own levels... 

The Quaker philosophy which freed us from the 
traditionalism of ordinances will doubtless also be able 
to free us from our own traditionalism and set us before 
the world as a church which knows no other religion 
than obedience to the Spirit of God. 


ee - 


“THE INFLUENCE OF FRIENDS ON THE 
TEMPERANCE REFORM.” 


ESTHER PUGH, SELMA, OHIO. 


In the very brief time allotted to me, in stating 
the growth of this work among Friends I almost ex- 
clusively confine myself to data obtained from the 
records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, for two 
reasons: I was able to obtain these, and the develop- 
ment in that Yearly Meeting was typical. 

The echo of the footsteps of the first generation 
of Friends —the truly “early” Friends — had scarcely 
died away, the first valiant evangelists had scarcely 
ceased their labors when a Chinese wall was built about 
the church of their organization. The earnest mission- 
‘ary spirit was turned to quiescence, the demarkation 
between them and the world’s people was so sharply 
-drawn that they did not mingle with the world. Whilst 
thus keeping their skirts clean, they could make no 
inroads with the reforms and innovations of which 
the need was palpable and which they were competent 
to start and foster. Hence it is that my subject is well 
Stated, the Influence of Friends. Influence is an in- 
determinate elusive quantity, generally the action of 
greater cr less causes for a length of time. It is woven 
Slowly of many tiny strands, as enlightenment and 
conviction grow but there is never a loss. 

As Friends could not join with the methods of 
others they carried great questions simply among therm:- 
selves.” 

Principles of human right and duty were discov- 
ered and applied in their own membership. They 


62 


cleared themselves of slavery, but little effort was given 
to those outside, except by example. Yet the utter- 
ances of Woolman and Benezet, the apostles of anti- 
Slavery, show they had strong sentiment on the Tem- 
perance question and had not the wrong of holding 
fellow beings in bondage weighed so heavily upon the 
church of that date, the needs of work in this direction 
“must have been pressed. But as its importance in- 
creased came the work that there will be no reproach 
among themselves. It is interesting to note that the 
first efforts were just about at the point of the UV. S. 
government at control now, to advise against and pro- 
hibit the sale among Indians. In 1687 a committee was 
appointed to visit and advise an eminent minister who . 
was a merchant, to caution him against selling rum 
to Indians or to Indian traders and the concern was” 
carried to the Yearly Meeting, and the following min- 
utes made there 1687, 6th mo. “ The practice of sell- 
ing rum or other strong liquors, to the Indians either 
directly or indirectly, or exchanging rum or other 
strong liquors for any goods or merchandise with 
them, considering the abuse they make of it is a thing 
contrary to the mind of the Lord, and a great grief 
and burden to his people and a great reflection and dis- 
honor to the truth, so far as any professing it are 
concerned ; and for the more effectual preventing this 
evil practice as aforesaid, we advise that this, our tes- 
timony, be entered in every Monthly Meeting book, 
and every Friend belonging to said meeting subscribe 
to the same,” the frst pledge of which I have been 
able to obtain trace, since the days of the Rechabites. 
There is one Monthly Meeting which has the record 
_ at that date, signed by forty-nine members. 
Year after year the Yearly Meetings “ advised ” 
that none accustom themselves to vain and idle com- 
pany, sipping and tippling of drams and strong drink 


63 


in inns or elsewhere. For though such as use the evil 
practice, may not suddenly be so far prevailed upon as 
to be drunk to the greatest degree, yet they often in- 
flame themselves thereby, so as to become like ground 
fitted for the greatest transgressions. And some that 
have had the example of virtuous parents have, from 
such beginnings in corners, arrived to a shameless ex- 
cess, to the ruin of themselves and their wives and 
. families, and to the scandal of the holy name whereby 
they have been called.” 1706. 

In. 1721 is a most remarkable minute, being far 
ahead of the times in its scientific aspect. 

“It becomes the concern of this meeting to advise 
- and caution all of our profession carefully to watch 
against this evil, when it begins to prevail among them 
in a general manner, or more particularly at occa- 
. sional times, of taking it, the frequent use whereof, 
especially drams, being a dangerous inlet, the repeti- 
tion and increase of them insensibly stealing on the 
unwary, by wantonness in the young and the false and 
deceitful heat it seems to supply the aged with; so that 
by long habit, when the true warmth of nature be- 
comes thereby weakened and supplanted, the stomach 
seems to crave strong spirits even to supply what they 
have destroyed.” In 1736 the advice was very pointed 
on giving spirits to children and year by year the utter- 
ances grew in intelligence and strength and comprehen- 
siveness. The subject of giving “drams” at vendues 
was strongly spoken against and followed up till there 
was a state law passed forbidding the use on such oc- 
casions. All through the 18th century the queries 
grew more pointed, never, however, reaching total ab- 
stinence, perhaps all walked as fast as they could. The 
minute of 1777 was a decided gain, a point from which 
to reckon. ‘“ This meeting is engaged to exhort and 
_admonish Friends to use great caution in that of dis- 


64 


tilling or encouraging distillation or using distilled 
eee of any kind and in regard to the practice of de- 
stroying grain by distilling Spirits out of it, it is the 
sense and judgment of this meeting, that. practice 
ought to be wholly discouraged and disused among 
Friends and that Friends ought not to sell their grain 
for that purpose nor to use or to partake of liquors 
made out of grain. Considering the difficulty and the 
snares, both to our young people and to others, which 
are attendant on that of keeping houses of public en- 
tertainment, beer houses and dram shops, whereby the 
reputation of Truth has greatly suffered and in some 
places the children and families of persons concerned 
herein, have been brought into disgrace and loss, both 
spiritually and temporally, it is the united sense and 
judgement of this meeting that Friends ought not to 
give way to the desire of outward gain arising irom 
such employments, but keep themselves clear thereof 
by attending to the pointings of pure wisdom.” But 
the matter had reached the point of “moderation” in 
medicinal use, which was a long goal. 
In 1788 dealing in liquors was made a disown- 
able offense in New England Yearly Meeting. In 
1788 the minute of 1777 in Philadelphia was endorsed 


and recommended. ‘In 1794 these advices of 1777. . 


and 1788 were very emphatically reiterated, with 

penalty affixed for neglecting the provisions thereof, 

“that they should not “be employed in the service of 
the Church, nor should their contributions be received” 
for its service.” Thus the new century began far 
in advance of the 18th and its utterances give no 
quarter to moderation and all that ilk and the church 
was really cleared and we know how dereliction would 
shock us now. And an aggressive spirit developed. 

A little later it was a friend in Ireland, William Mar- 
tin, who urged upon Father Matthew to take up the 


eee / 


"4 


Econ tl 
SS 


FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, BUILT 1836 


65 


cause of total abstinence. “Oh, Theobald Matthew, if 
thou would but take the cause in hand,” he begged 
again and again, till heart and conscience were taken 
and thus the man was captured. He held solemn vigil, 
and laid the case before the Lord till he was con-. 
vinced of his call and then he led the Roman Cath- 
olic total abstinence movement. The estimate is that 
5,000,000 signed the pledge under his ministration. 
In the first month in Ireland there were 200,000 
signers. i 
It. was a Friend, Joel Stratton, who first moved 
John B. Gough and who staid by till he was estab- 
lished. In the campaign in Kansas David Tatum was 
a host as a leader. In 1880 Elias Jessup polled 30,000 
votes for Governor of Iowa, thus forcing prohibition 
to the front so that in 1882 the prohibitory amendment 
was carried by a majority of 27,000. 

‘When that remarkable, that most distinctly divine 
call came for women to arouse to the help of the 
Lord against the mighty, the Quaker women recog- 
nized it "and volunteered for the war. Everything of 
tradition, of education, of time-honored beliefs of the 
application of the old doctrine of the direct call of the 
spirit reached usand we realized our part. Friends have 
been of the steadiest and most persistent workers in the 
W. C. T. U. and the brethren have been true brothers- 
in-law. Nineteen of our membership have been State, 
W. C. T. U. Presidents, many of these for a long series 
of years, and many others prominent in the organiza- 
tion, not now in membership with us, had received their 
training in the Quaker church. And this proportion is 
very large when we consider our small number. 
Friends have been valued and valuable workers in 
the W. C. T. U. in every position in which they. have 
been placed. For the last eight years a Friend has 
been President of the National Temperance Society ; 


66 


for many years a Friend, Aaron Powell, wrought val- 
iantly with that Society with tongue and pen. 

And to us, the smallest of the tribes of Israel, 
has been committed the calling of an Interdenomi- 
national Conference of religious bodies to consider this 
tremendous question, and this call is meeting with 
ready sympathy and thus will be another great effort 
to drive the drink traffic from the land.- 

But I must retrace a little in the list of heroes. 
In 1774 Anthony Benezet wrote a pamphlet, antedat- 
ing Dr. Rush by eleven years, of which the title was, 
“The Mighty Destroyer Displayed in some account of 
the dreadful Havoc made by the mistaken use as well 
as the Abuse of Distilled Spirituous Liquors.” Nor 
must we forget the Quaker ancestry and the Quaker 
training of Dr. Rush and Neal Dow. One of the 
great examples of influence was when Dr. Rush put 
forth his tract in 1785, the first real effort made to 
bring the question of temperance to the front, it pro- 
duced a most tremendous effect, so much so that 
1785 is the date from which this reform counts. 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOEL WRIGHT. 
JESSE WRIGHT, SPRINGBORO, OHIO. 


In the preparation of this brief biographical sketch 
of Joel Wright, I haye devoted but little space to his 
intimate private life, confining myself mainly to his 
connection with, and his services in behalf of the So- 
ciety of Friends, and I have kept in mind the fact that 
this occasion is not a family reunion, and so have 
omitted a genealogy of the Wright family, making 
only brief mention of Joel Wright’s parents, John and 
Elizabeth Wright, and a bare reference to his (Joe!’s 
immediate family, his wife and children. 

In the spirit of Cromwell’s injunction to the 
artist who was painting his portrait, I have endeav- 
ored to. avoid everything that might seem like 
panegyric, leaving the character of the man to be in- 
ferred from such incidents of his life as are here ré- 
corded. 

Joel Wright was born sixth month, 1750, in Men- 
allin township, York, now Adams, county, Pennsyl- 
vania. His father, John Wright, and Elizabeth his 
wife, emigrated from Castleshane, County Monaghan, 
Ireland, to Pennsylvania, sometime during the three 
years from 1737 to 1740. 

“Of John Wright, the records tell us nothing espe- 
cially noteworthy, though there is evidence that he did 
not come over in the same ship with William Penn. 
Some of his descendants of the present generation lay 
much stress on the fact that he was not born in Cork 
or Tipperary, but that his family belonged to a cclony 
of Friends that emigrated from England to the north 
of Ireland about the close of the seventeenth century. 


68 


We may put it this way, John Wright was of good 
old English stock, somewhat modified by Irish environ- 
ment. Joel Wright was the youngest of ten children, 
five born in Ireland and five in America. 

That he made the most of the limited facilities 
for obtaining a good education that were accessable 

‘ to him is evidenced by the fact that he taught school 
for many years and was considered so competent as 

a surveyor, or, civil engineer as we say now, that he 
was commissioned by the state government of Ohio to 
survey and plat the Capital at Co s._ In the year 
~—~1708 3 committee consisting of Evan Thomas, George 
| Ellicott, Joel Wright and Rees Cadwallader was ap- 
pointed by Baltimore Yearly Meeting to visit the Wy- 
andott Indians at Upper Sandusky in what is now 

Wyandott county, Ohio, to confer with them as to . 
the best means to be employed by the Society of 
Friends for the benefit of those Indians. 

- Gerard Brooke, Andrew Ellicott, Jr., and Philip 
IX. Thomas, by consent of the committee, accompanied 
them on the trip. Joel Wright kept a diary of their 
journey from Pipe Creek, Maryland, to Upper San- 
dusky. Soon after they started on the return trip 
he was taken sick and the homeward journey was 
much retarded by his illness. The incidents of the 
trip are taken partly from the diary kept by him (now ~ 
in possession of one of his descendants) and partly 
from an account of the journey written by one of the 
Friends that accompanied the committee and which 
will be found in Friends Miscellany for tenth month, 

Pilla eid i na wt ee ae 
On the ninth of fifth month, 1799, the party started . 
from Pipe Creek, Maryland, on horseback, on the 
journey, a large portion of which was through an un- 
broben wilderness. Rees Cadwallader was not with 
ther at the start, but joined them later. 


69 


Nothing of special interest is noted until their 
arrival on the eighteenth at Georgetown on the east 
bank of the Ohio river. On the twentieth they crossed 
over and for six or seven days made slow progress, 
the streams, small tributaries of the Ohio and the 
Muskingum, were so much swollen by the heavy rains 
that they could not be forded, so they felled trees in 
such a way as to make footbridges and made their 
horses swim over. As Joel Wright’s diary relates, 
“We felled the trees with our tomahawk.” Tomahawk 
is written plainly in the singular number. 

On the evening of the twenty-sixth they camped 
on the banks of the Tuscarawas and the next morn- 
ing two Indians came over from the Moravian Mission 
called Goshen and took the party and their baggage 
across in a canoe. 

The Moravian Indians and their pastor, Seizber- 
ger, treated them with much civility. Up to this point 
Joel Wright had no doubt been a competent guide, 
but before venturing farther they employed an Indian 
guide, Joseph White-eyes, to pilot them from Goshen 
to Upper Sandusky. With an Indian added to the 
party we may be very sure that there was a corre- 
sponding increase in the number of tomahawks. 

About noon of the twenty-ninth they reached 
Killbuck creek and found a very deep and strong cur- 
rent. In less than three hours White-eyes had a bark 
canoe ready to carry them over. On the thirty-first 
théy came to an Indian path leading from Pittsburg 
to Upper Sandusky. They encamped for the night 
near the home of a French Canadian who had an In- 
dian wife and kept some goods to trade with the 
Indians. 

On the third of sixth month they reached the 
Sandusky river, the banks of which they followed ten 
or twelve miles, to Upper Sandusky, the end of their 


70 


long journey. Here they found that circumstances 
were not very favorable to their mission. Chief Tarhie 
was very drunk on the day of their arrival and “many 
of the Indians’”— to quote the diary —“had been, for a 
considerable time, intoxicated with strong drink.” But 
by the morning of the fourth many of them had sobered 
off, and Chief Tarhie was in a condition to receive 
them, which he did in a friendly manner, and imme- 
‘diately summoned a council of the chiefs to hear what 
the Friends had to say. He was greatly pleased when 
he learned the object of their visit, but the grand 
council, which the committee had traveled so far to 
attend, did not meet for two weeks and Chief Tarhie 
was not authorized to make any definite arrangements 
previous to that time. The Friends decided that as 
their stock of provisions was running low and the 
Indians had very little to spare, it would not be pru- 
dent for them to wait until the meeting of the grand 
council. So about four o’clock on the afternoon of 
the fourth they started on the return journey. 

The hardships to which they had been exposed, 
together with bad water and an insufficient supply of 
food had reduced them all to an emaciated condition 
and Joel Wright was quite ill. They concluded to re- 
turn by a different route, aiming to reach some of the 
settlements that had recently been made on the Scioto. 
On the evening of the seventh they reached Franklin- 
ton on the banks of the Scioto, where an infant colony 
was building houses, none as yet were enclosed, but 
the party was received with great kindness and sup- 
plied with such provisions as they needed. They re- 
mained here a few days to rest and recruit. Joel 
Wright being too sick to travel on horseback, a canoe 
was hired and he and the writer of the journal from 
which this account of the return journey is taken, 
descended the Scioto to Chillicothe, where they arrived 


71 


on the night of the tenth. Here they remained until the 
fourteenth, then started by the nearest practicable 
route across Southeastern Ohio to Wheeling, which 
they reached on the twentieth. From that point to 
their homes in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the jour- 
ney seems to have been an uneventful one. It is diffi- 
cult for us in these days of vestibuled limited trains 
to appreciate the hardships and exposure incident to a 
journey of twelve hundred miles on horseback, of 
which at least three hundred miles was through an 
unbroken wilderness, inhabited by ‘savages and wild 
beasts. 

_ Excepting Friends, people at that time, more gen- 
erally than to-day, accepted the idea that “A good In- 
dian is a dead Indian,” and there were no doubt many, 
even among i‘riends, who raised the question whether 
any amount of good likely to be accomplished by a 
mission like this could justify the sacrifice. We may 
be sure these Friends had no misgivings, and in that 
they had their reward. 

_In the capacity of surveyor, Joel Wright made 
several trips across the Allegheny mountains about the 
close of the eighteenth century, surveying large tracts 
of land in the valleys of the Muskingum, Scioto, and 
Miami rivers, and particularly i in what was then called 
the “Miami country,” with which he was so well 
pleased that he located in Waynesville early in the 
year 1806. As shown by the meeting records his 
certificate from Pipe Creek Monthly Meeting in Mary- 
land to Miami Monthly Meeting was dated third 
month, fifteenth, 1806, accepted sixth month, twelfth, 
1806. He seems to have been active in the business of 
the Quarterly Meeting which was established fifth 
month, thirteenth, 1809. His name appears on the 
minutes of the Quarterly Meeting as a member of 
many of the committees, and as the names of many 


72 


of his colleagues on these committees may interest 
some who listen to the reading of this sketch, will 
quote from the minutes as follows: 


Eighth month, twelfth, 1809, Joel Wright was 
made one of the representatives to the ensuing Yearly 
Meeting at Baltimore, with David Ballard, Henry 
Steddom, William Walker, Isaac Perkins, Mordecai 
Walker, Jonathan Wright, Jr., Joseph Cloud and 
Joshua Ballanger. 

Eleventh month, ninth, 1811, he and Benjamin 
Hopkins, Samuel Teague, Samuel Brown, Jonathan 
Wright, Benjamin Farquhar, James Hadley, Jonathan 
Saunders, Thomas Roberts, Joshua Pickett, Thomas 
Talbott, Richard Brown, Robert Furness, Samuel 
Spray, Enoch Pierson, Henry Yount, Josiah Tomlin- 
son and Walter Kennedy, were appointed a commit- 
tee to prepare a memorial concerning “Our beloved 
Friend, John Simpson, deceased.” This big commit- 
tee prepared a memorial and it was submitted to the : 
Quarterly Meeting second month, eighth, 1812. It 
was considered too lengthy and was referred to Joel 
Wright, Samuel Spray and.Benjamin Hopkins for 
abridgement. It is to be hoped that this committee — 
used the blue pencil with discretion. 


ed Wright lived in Waynesville many years be- 
. “fore “his removal to Springboro, where he spent the 
closing years of his life. While living in Waynes- 
ville he was occupied in teaching school, surveying and 
buying and selling land. A brief notice of some of. 
the real estate transactions to which he was a party 
ay be of interest as showing the difference in prices 
of land at the beginning and the close of the nineteenth 
century. 


In the year 1807 he and Abijah O’Neal ne of 
{ J. Macher 1,040 acres of land for $1,500. 


73 


In 1808 he bought of Abijah O’Neal 285 acres 
for $410. 

In the same year he sold to David Pugh, Benjamin 
Evans, Isaac Mills, David Harner, el Test and 
Benjamin Hopkins, trustees, outlot No. 14 in Waynes- 

ville, “for the purpose of a meeting place, graveyard, 
pasture lot, or such other purpose as they may apply it 
to,” consideration $8o. 

The trustees gave bond in the sum of $10,000 that 
they would, on the requisition of the Monthly, Quar- 
terly or Yearly Meeting, as the case might be, give a 

‘good and sufficient deed for this property to such per- 

sons as the Meeting might direct. 

On this lot was built several years later the house 
now occupied as a meeting house by Hicksite Friends. 

Joel Wright was one of a committee appointed by 
the meeting to examine the title to the land bought of 
him by the meeting. The committee no doubt made a 
careful examination of the county records and Joel 
Wright as chairman could cheerfully report to the 
meeting that the title was all right. 

In 1819 he sold to Noah Haines, Frederic Stan- 
ton, John Worrel, Thomas Swift and John Satter- 
thwaite, trustees for the public burying ground at 
Waynesville, a tract of land for a public burying 
ground forever and for no other purpose whatever, 
consideration $30. 

Fearing that I may trespass on the time of those 
who follow. me, I will close with a brief reference to 
some features of Joel Wright’s private life. 

He was married about the year 1773 to Elizabeth 
Farquhar, daughter of William and Ann Farquhar, of 
Pipe Creek, Maryland. Their children were Ann, 
Allen, Rachel, Jonathan, Israel and Elizabeth. Eliza- 
beth, the wife, died at Pipe Creek, Maryland, sixth 
month, twenty-fourth, 1805. 


78 


Mary Frame also stated that the wedding dress was 
still in existence and that the wedding hat was similar to 
the one exhibited except that it was of fur. 


Davis Furnas gave an interesting reminiscence of 
one of his ancestors, who, with a companion, was cap- 
tured by pirates. 

When nearing Algiers he determined to escape by 
swimming to shore from a long distance out. It seemed 
impossible of accomplishment, and his companion 
begged him to desist, but he succeeded in the attempt, 
although fired upon by the pirates many times. 

Old memories were stirred to such an extent that 
more or less confusion was occasioned, and the re- 
marks that were made could not be heard. 

An interesting feature was the number of very 
aged persons that were present, whose infirmities were 
almost forgotten and whose faces glowed with anima- 
tion as they lived over again the scenes of long ago. 


‘ 


"~ ——EVENING SESION.—— 


TREND OF MODERN THOUGHT TOWARDS 
QUAKERISM. 


(BY JONATHAN B. WRIGHT, HARVEYSBURG, OHIO. ) 


Theology is a progressive science. Every step of 
its progress is at the cost of toil or sacrifice or blood. 
The world wheels slowly towards the light. The time 
comes tardily on, when the “kingdoms of this world 
shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of 
His Christ.” 

The fact that the essential principles of Quak- 
erism are one by one coming to be accepted by the 
world, does not prove that the early Quakers dis- 
covered the absolute Truth, or had any monopoly on 
Revelation: for they did neither the one nor the 
other. But it does prove that the early Quakers, in 
spite of many mistakes and much human infirmity, 
made some marvelous discoveries in the line of Truth, 
and by virtue of these discoveries, forged ahead of 
their age, two centuries or more: and the belated 
world is but now coming up with them. Ah! what 
a pity it would be, if the world coming up, would 
have to discover that any of us are wrapped up in 
mere verbiage, and names and externals, and are 
strangers to the true inwardness of our inheritance. 

Had we the time, it would be interesting to in- 
quire how they came to learn so much of that which is 
eternally true. The answer would be found, partly 
in the needs of their time, partly in the men and 
women who were the leaders of the movement, and 


oe 


76 
north of the Ohio river having been by the Conti- 


nenta] Congress dedicated forever to freedom and the — 


disturbance with the Indians having been closed by 
“Wayne's Treaty” with them at Greenville, Ohio, the 
southwestern part of the state was considered safe 
for settlement. Thus the emigration of Friends began, 
and in the year 1802 Robert Furnas came to this part 
of the country on horseback to consider the possibil- 
ities of making this a home for himself and family. 
It took six weeks to complete the journey. 

Finding this a good land and having decided upon 
a location, he returned to South Carolina and began 
preparations for the removal. — 

Some time during the next year with his wife 
and three small children, the youngest but six weeks 
old, they left the land of their birth, “and many anxious 
friends for their long journey over mountains, across 
rivers and through unbroken forests, until they reached 
their destination, which was about three miles up the 
river from our now beautiful village of Waynesville, 
which consisted then of but a few log houses. 

He was a blacksmith by trade, but a man who 
could turn his hand to most anything. There being 
no physician in the neighborhood he was frequently 
called upon to act as physician and surgeon. He also 
wrote wills and contracts of different kinds, for which 
he refused remuneration. 

Being ready in conversation, a bright mind and a 
face that spoke of peace with God and man, with an 
interest in the common things about him, he was 
company for old and young. Especially did boys love 
to linger near him and listen to his accounts of 
adventure and receive his loving counsel and tender 
admonitions. 

Above all he did not neglect the spritiual part 
of his nature, but early in life interested himself in 


ved 


the work of the Church. He was one of the first 
clerks of Miami Monthly Meeting, and was often called 
upon to help decide matters of great interest to the 
church. 


-It has been said of him he was neither forward 
nor contentious, but when a question of great moment 
was to be decided by the church he listened until most 
all had spoken, then deliberately gave his judgment, 
which carried such weight with it no farther dis- 
cussion was needed. 


_He sat at the head of Caesar’s'Creek Meeting for 
many years, attending its meetings twice a week, so 
long as his physical strength would permit. At one 
time a grandson made a calculation that the distance 
traveled by him to and from his meeting would be 
more than the distance around the globe. 

Promptness was one of his strong characteristics. 
On one occasion he could not find his hat, and rather 
than be late to meeting went without it. 

He was very plain in his dress and address. 
When a new hat was purchased he always took off the 
band and twisted it before replacing it, the general 
supposition is he thought it much plainer that way. 
He was indeed a remarkable man. 

Having lived with his devoted wife for over sixty- 
seven. years, reared a family of eleven children steing 
them comfortably settled in ‘homes of their-own, finally 
at the advanced age of ninety years, loved and re- 
spected by all, he * passed peacefully from. works to 
rewards. 


After reading the above, the writer exhibited a beaver 
hat (the head-dress of women Friends, preceding the plain 
bonnet), worn after coming to Waynesville, by Hannah Wilson 
Furnas, wife of Robert Furnas. The hat is now the property 
of Hannah Mills, the only surviving member of their family 
now in her eighty-seventh year. 


78 


Mary Frame also stated that the wedding dress was 
still in existence and that the wedding hat was similar to 
the one exhibited except that it was oi fur. 


Davis Furnas gave an interesting reminiscence of 
one of his ancestors, who, with a companion, was cap- _ 
tured by pirates. 

When nearing Algiers he determined to escape by 
swimming to shore from a long distance out. It seemed 
impossible of accomplishment, and his companion 
begged him to desist, but he succeeded in the attempt, 
although fired upon by the pirates many times. . 

Old memories were stirred to such an extent that 
more or less confusion was occasioned, and the re- 
marks that were made could noi be heard. 

An interesting feature was the number of very 
aged persons that were present, whose infirmities were 
almost forgotten and whose faces glowed with anima- 
tion as they lived over again the scenes of long ago. 


“. — EVENING SESION.— 


TREND OF MODERN THOUGHT TOWARDS 
QUAKERISM. 


(BY JONATHAN B. WRIGHT, HARVEYSBURG, OHIO.) 


Theology is a progressive science. Every step of 
its progress is at the cost of toil or sacrifice or blood. 
The world wheels slowly towards the light. The time 
comes tardily on, when the “kingdoms of this world 
shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of 
His Christ.” 

The fact that the essential principles of Quak- 
erism are one by one coming to be accepted by the 
world, does not prove that the early Quakers dis- 
covered the absolute Truth, or had any monopoly on 
Revelation: for they did neither the one nor the 
other. But it does prove that the early Quakers, in 
spite of many mistakes and much human infirmity, 
made some marvelous discoveries in the line of Truth, 
and by virtue of these discoveries, forged ahead of 
their age, two centuries or more: and the belated 
world is but now coming up with them. Ah! what 
a pity it would be, if the world coming up, would 
have to discover that any of us are wrapped up in 
mere verbiage, and names and externals, and are 
strangers to the true inwardness of our inheritance. 

Had we the time, it would be'interesting to in- 
quire how they came to learn so much of that which is 
eternally true. The answer would be found, partly 
in the needs of their time, partly in the men and 
women who were the leaders of the movement, and 


especially in the one man first and foremost in the 
Quaker movement. 

It may be said that, in George Fox, God found 
a man well fitted to become the instrument of renewed 
and widened revelation to the world. His pious train- 
ing, his serious disposition, his native piety, his great 
earnestness, and his absolute honesty fitted him to 
become the oracle of God. His nature was one of 
marvelous depth, and he came to have an intensely 
real and vital experience of the life of God in his 
soul. He was a close observer of men, and possessed 
a keen discernment of spirit, and a quick wit that 
made him more than a match, any day, for the dile- 
tante priests and the time-serving justices who some- 
times crossed swords with him. He was % 
free from the prejudices of systematic theol i - 
was a constant and careful reader of the Ho Mecca ’ 
tures, and he studied them under the conscious guid- 
ance of the Spirit. His thought was broad and prac- 
tical and judicious. His judgment was well balanced, 
but he did not depend upon his own judgment alone: 
but he sought the spirit-illumined counsel of his as- 
sociates. For the Quaker movement did not_depend 
on Fox alone. He gathered about himself a band of 
men and women like himself, and they sought the 
light unitedly. And these associates of his, Penn, and 
Barclay, and Pennington, and many others were men 
of strong character, rugged honesty, and keen good- 
sense. 

These men were not free from error; but they 
recognized the fallibility of human judgment, and 
sought the united wisdom of the Church—not a 
Church that depended for authority on apostolic suc- 
cession, but on the Unction from on High. 


They were guided into the truth because they 
went back reverently to the oracles of God, and sought 


fully done the will of God and sm were able to mow 
the terumg and overtermmmg of the Lord's band upem 
them Mis deaimgs with then @ a owm mudi 


- Tihey were sometimes troubled with fanaticism, 
~ bet they Gad too mock of the ballast of truth be 
muciz disturbed br it. 

They were so practical im their religion that it 
clothed itself im deeds, rather tham im theories, and 
them deeds were those of mercy and long-suiiecme 


82 


and many seem to have lived in daily accord with their 
doctrine. Their purity, their honesty, their kindli- 
ness, their sturdy integrity, and most of all their love 
for one another, made them seem worthy to be called 
the “friends of God.” 

These are some of the reasons why the Quakers 
learned so much of the truth, and why they have 
exercised an influence in the world for good, out of 
all proportion to their numbers. 

Let us now consider the thought of the world of 
to-day, and its attitude toward the early Quakers and 
their doctrines, and see if we will not be convinced 
at once of a trend in that direction. t 

The change of front has not all come about by a 
study of the Quakers or their writings. It has come 
to many as it did to them, from a direct return to 
God and His oracles, from the careful study of the 
operation of His laws, and from the reception of His 
grace, which is still as mighty and as active as it 
was in the days of Fox. 

God is no respecter of persons or of names and 
the Quaker truths have sometimes become the prop- 
erty of people where we would least expect it. 

The first man of the moderns I shall quote is 
that nervous Scotchman, who has impressed himself 
upon the English-reading world as the most vigorous 
thinker of the nineteenth century. In his “Sartor Re- 
sartus, ” Carlyle says of George Fox: 

“Perhaps the most remarkabie incident in Mod- 
ern History, seys Teufeisdréckh, is not the Diet of 
Worms, still less, the battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, 
Peterloo, or any other battle: but an in cident passed: 
carelessly over by most Bea and treated with 
some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George 
Fox’s making to himself a suit of leather. This man, 
the first of the Quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, 


83 


was one of those to whom under ruder or purer form,,. 
the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to mani- 
fest itself: and across all the hulls of Ignorance and 
earthly Degradation, shine through in unspeakable 
Awetulness, unspeakable Beauty on their souls: who, 
therefore, are rightly accounted Prophets, God-pos- 
dessed, or even Gods, as in some periods it has 
chanced. .* * *° Stitch away, thou noble Fox: 
every prick of that little instrument is pricking into 
the heart of slavery, and World-worship, and the 
Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong Swim- 
mer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the 
prison-ditch, within which Vanity hoids her work- 
house and Ragfair into lands of true liberty: were 
the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free 
Man, and thou art he!” 


This is in marvelous contrast to the views of many 
of Fox’s contemporaries, who regarded him as a 
troublesome and impracticable fanatic, and in’ their- 
prejudice and narrowness could make nothing of him. 

There is no subject in which the practice of th 
churches in generai is farther behind us than in the 
use of the ordinances, and yet in most of the 
it is freely conceded that the ‘ordinances 2 a 
Zotmt of public confession, and have no savi = 
or gtacé. And the most spirituaily-minded people 
everywhere, those who have. tasted most deeply of 
the good word of life, are impressed with the non- 
essential nature of these ontward observances. Az 
here and there we find afew who refuse and reject 
them. 

The clear-souled, sainily Emerson was a clergy- 
man in a church which made it his duty to administer 
the rites of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And he 
resigned his place and his salary, and gave up preach- 


( 


Mw © 


“8a 
ing because he could not conscientiously continue to 
- administer them. He said: ; 

“To me it is inconceivable that Jesus, whose 
whole life was a protest against formalism, could have 
intended to fix upon the church ordinances to be per- 
petually celebrated.” 

Is it any wonder, then, that Carlyle and Emerson 
were. bound to each other with an instinctive and ir- 
resistible love? 

Lyman Abbott, one of the most vigorous theo- 
. Jogical writers of America, said in regard to “Foot- 
washing”: ‘There is just as much ground in Scrip- 
-.ture for observing this ceremony as there is for Bap- 
tism.”” And by church-affiliation Abbott is pasties: a 

Dunker nor a Quaker. 

In the Salvation Army we find the preachers, 
like Paul, so busy with the problem of getting men 
saved, that they seldom speak of the ordinances, though 
they feel free to administer them where there is a 
- special desire for them. : 

The Salvationists, moreover, are like us in another 
respect, though their military ways and their push 
and noise are in strange contrast with our method of 
working. They believe implicitly in the leading of 
the Holy Spirit, and seek it constantly in their work. 
An acquaintance of mine, once asked a quick-witted 
Salvationist: “What is the difference between the 
Quaker and the Salvationists?” His instant reply was: 
“They believe in being moved by the Holy Spirit. We 
believe in moving the Spirit.” 

Prof. James, of Harvard, an authority of an ex- 

ceptionally high order, has recently published a philo- 
sophical study of Religious Experience. In this book 
ne pays a fine tribute to the character and influence of 
Fox and the early Quakers. 
He finds two universal marks of religious ex- 


joel 


85 


perience; first,.a feeling of wrongness, and second,.~ 
feeling of need of something to remove the wrongness 
and restore a right relation. 


This was the beginning of George Fox’s religious. 
experience: but he learned further by direct revela-- 
tion, that Jesus could speak to his condition. Still: 
further he learned that when he found that within~ 
himself which would not keep sweet, God, in answer- 
to his call for help, came in and cast it out; and shut . 
the door. . 

He also found that the same Spirit that had con- - 
victed and pardoned, and cast out the wrongness, 
would abide in his soul as a comforter and constant 
guide. 

These doctrines, which George Fox came to re=- 
gard as fundamental to the religion of Christ, are, 
most of them, now held as the common property’ of © 
the Christian Church. It may be true, that in many - 
places, they are held only as a theory; but that they - 
should be held at all is an advance. 

That God communicates with men: first, in con— 
victing of sin, and second, in comforting aiter He has 
pardoned is almost universally believed. That He 
guides by the direct influence of His Spirit in the 
heart of man, is recognized by the more spiritual por- 
tion of the church, in all denominations. And by the 
inner cult of the most deeply spiritual it is believed 
and witnessed that God reveals Himself by teaching 
in the inner consciousness of men, His own doctrine- 
and nature. 

Thus the most essential and vital and precious. 
principle of Quakerism has become, not the common 
property of the churches, but the personal possessiom 
of those most deeply schooled in the ways of God, 
among all Protestant Christians. 

But to put my assertions to the proof, let me 


86 


“quote a few passages from some modern religious 
writers. 

I quote first from an anonymous book, published 
a few years ago by Harpers. The book is entitled: 
“God in His World,’ and has been credited, with 
how much truth I cannot tell, to Henry M. Alden, 
Editor of Harper’s Weekly. The whole book, from 
cover to cover, is pervaded with the Quaker spirit. To 
‘illustrate this a hundred quotations might be made. 
I give but two: 

“Only the Spirit comprehendeth the things of the 
‘Spirit. The full significance of any Divine revelation 
ais only of spiritual discernment. The world without 
us, and the world within us is a leading toward such 
a revelation, a preparation therefor, a lisping of its 
vocabulary. * * * It is the meek only who shall 
inherit the earth. It is the open heart, the loosened 
nand, which receives the Divine Strength. We wait 
upon the Lord. Instead of fighting sin with our own 
puny force — which is after all, only a dalliance there- 
with—we accept his life, and behold, the enemy is fled. 
Sin is the business of a heart unoccupied by the divine 
lite.’? 

“Our Christian life is, then, at once, a heavenly 
-enfolding, and an earthly unfolding, according to the 
heavenly type—the image of. the son. We con- 
-stantly awake in his likeness. He is not with us in 
the body: but his Spirit he hath left with us to guide 
us into all truth.” . 

The -great evangelist, Finney, constantly sought 
and acknowledged the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
‘and often had openings “and revelations of the divine 
nature that filled him with amazement and unspeak- 
able joy. Some of the greatest victories of his 
triumphant career came when he had followed what 
vhe believed to be the special leading of the Holy 


87 


Spirit. And his teaching and influence were instru- 
_ mental in bringing multitudes into a deeper knowledge 
of the ways of the Spirit. 

The same thing may be said of Moody in our 
own generation, and now, since his death, still, the 
men who are brought, as teachers to Northfield are 
men of the Spirit — nearly all of them men who know 
and joyfully proclaim the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. 

One of these, widely known as a scholar, George 
Adam Smith, gives a recipe for those préachers who 
find preaching dull and lifeless work: “Resolve, first, 
that you will never appear before your audience with- 
out something that has cost you study; and second, 
that you will never attempt to preach without the Holy 
Spirit.” 

Horace Bushnell, the great Hartford preacher, 
when about 45 years of age, had an experience which 
he regarded as a personal discovery of Christ and of 
God as represented in him. To the people who knew 
him best, he seemed a new man, or rather the same 
man with a heavenly investiture. Or as he himself 
explained it: “I seemed to pass a boundary. I had 
never been very legal in my Christian life: but now 
I passed from those partial seeings, glimpses and 
doubts, into a clearer knowledge of God and. his in- 
spirations which I have never wholly lost. The change 
was into faith—a sense of the freeness of God, and 
the ease of approach to Him.” 

It is not surprising that a man with Bushnell’s 
experience shouid have had a profound respect for 
Friends and their doctrines. I shall give you two 
quotations from his masterful argument, “Nature and 
the Supernatural.” 

“Led on thus. by Fox, the Friends have always 
claimed the continuance of the original gifts of the 
Spirit in the Apostolic age, and have looked for them, 


88 


we may almost say, in the ordinary course of their 
Christian demonstrations.” 

And again: 

“Savanarola, the “fanatic Be history,’ will emerge, 
not unlikely, clad in the honors of a prophet. So 
of Columbus, Fenelon, Fox, Franke, and a thousand 
others who walked, consciously or unconsciously, by a 
supernatural instigation. — They were nothing, it will 
be seen, save by the secret inspiration, that bore them 
on. And how many of God’s little ones, living and 
dying in obscurity, have yet done as great wonders i in 
His name, as if they had been teachers and heroes.” 


In 1892 Robert Horton, a devout Congregation- 
alist preacher of England, crossed the Atlantic and 
delivered a course of lectures on Preaching to the 
Divinity School at Yale. These lectures were pub- 
lished in a volume entitled “Verbum Dei,” or the 
Word of God. The volume is full of the ideas and 
doctrines of Quakerism. It teaches with great solem- 
nity, that the Word of God comes to men now as it 
did to the prophets of old. The theme of the book, 
given in the author’s own words, is this: 

“Every living preacher must receive his message 
in a communication direct from God, and the constant 
purpose of his life must be to receive it uncorrupted, 
and to deliver it without addition or subtraction.” 

Here are a few short quotations from the book: 

“A good voice is invaluable if God speaks through 
it. A commanding presence is a great help if God’s 
presence commands it. The rich flow of language 
may be fertilizing as well as charming, if the tide of 
God is in it.” 

Again: 

“All manner of sins may be forgiven a preacher, 
—a harsh voice, a clumsy delivery, a bad pronuncia- 


89 


tion, an insufficient scholarship, a crude doctrine, an 
ignorance of men; but there is one defect which can 
not be forgiven him, for it is a sort of blasphemy 
against the Holy Ghost: It cannot be forgiven him, 
if he preaches when he has not received a message 
from God to deliver. * * * He is to get a mes- 
sage from God before he speaks it—that is the re- 
quirement. * * * He is to climb Sinai with its 
ring-fence of death, and on the summit speak face to 
face with Him whom no one can see and yet live. He 
is to push through the Wilderness, eating angel’s meat 
or nothing, and scale the crags of Horeb, where in a 
great hollow shadowed by a hand, he may, through 
earthquake, wind and fire, discern the still small voice.” 

Horton gives us one significant quotation from 


Lowell, 


“If chosen.men could never be alone 
In deep mid-silence, open-eared to God, 
No greatness ever had been dreamed or done.” 


As to the subject of Slavery: there is now among 
Christian people almost everywhere, as complete a con- 
sensus of opinion that slavery is wrong, as there was 
once an agreement that slavery, was right and founded 
on the principles of religion and common sense. I 
need take no time for quotation on that subject. 

On the question of Peace, the world is yet far 
enough away from the standard of Christ; yet it is 
not so far away as it was two, hundred years ago. 
In these two centuries there has been a great change 
for the better. We see abundant evidence of this in 
the literature of the time. 

The treatment of history has been revolutionized, 
and the long and detailed descriptions of wars and 
campaigns, and bloody battles, have been replaced by 
studies of the habits and character of the people, and 


90 


the growth ‘of government in po and purpose to 
meet the popular needs. 
Many of the poets have been caught at times by 
the Spirit of Peace. 
Even Tennyson, Englishman that he was, and 
therefore greatly appealed to by a fight, sany of the 
time, 


“When the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags 
were furled, 

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. 

There the common-sense of most shall hold a fretful realm 
in awe, 

And the kindly earth shall Slumber! lapp’d in universal law.” 


Lowell tells us in his New England dialect and 
shrewd Yankee Common Sense: 


“Ez fur war, I call it murder, 
There you hev it plain and flat. 

I don’t want to go no furder, 
Than my testymen for that.” 


While Longfellow in his beautiful poem on “The 
Arsenal at Springfield” says: 


“Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of Arsenals and forts.” 


And Whittier, of course Whittier is a peace-man: 
but the fact that Whittier is so widely read, and so 
deeply loved is one of the surest signs that the liter- 
ature of peace is becoming popular. 

The novel is the kind of literature that specially 
characterizes our own age. And the great novelists 
are strong in their denunciation of war. 

It is “true, that there is in some a tendency to re- 
vert to the description of battles: but even these show 


91 


up war in its horrors, as though they had been meant 
to correct the fancy that would picture war in roseate 
hues. 

Thackeray, :the great, the gentle, the jender- 
hearted, stands by common consent in the forefront 
of the ranks of the novelists. In one of his “Round-a- 
bout Papers” he speaks thus, after describing his visit 
to Waterloo: 

“Well, though I made a vow not to talk about 
* Waterlco, either here or after dinner, there is one 
little secret admission that one must make after seeing 
it. 

“Let an Englishman go and see that field and he 
never forgets it. The sight is an event in his life; and 
though it kas been seen by millions of peaceable gents 
—grocers from Bond Street, meek attorneys from 
Chancery Lane, and timid tailors from Piccadilly, I 
will wager that there is not one of them but feels 
a glow as he locks at the place, and remembers that 
he too is an Englishman. 

“It is a wrong, egotiStical, savage, unchristian 
feeling, and that is the end of it. A man of peace has 
no right to be dazzled by that red-coated glory, and 
to intoxicate his vanity with those remembrances of 
carnage and*of triumph. The same sentence that tells 
us that on earth there ought to be peace and good- 
will amongst men, tells us to whom glory belongs.” 

The theologians have changed their views as 
much as have the noveiisis and historians. Newman 
Smith says: 

“Christianity is not primarily a system of doc- 
trines, arranged in rational order, but a system of 

eings in right relation to God, and in harmony with 
each other.” 

Let me give a quctation from’ Max Hark in his 
“Unity of Truth”: 


92 


“Character is the sole standard of judgment. The 
brawny prize-fighter, strong as an ox, is less of a man 
than the weakest child that cherishes mercy, tender- 
ness, and pity in his heart: the mightiest conqueror, 
sacrificing the lives of thousands of his fellow men to 
his ambition is far less heroic and great, than the 
poorest woman who at the wash-tub sacrifices her 
own comfort, health, and life itself for the suste- 
mance and happiness of her family. This is no longer 
mere ‘pious sentimentality.” It is the sober verdict 
of pure science itself. To live for others is the hi 
manhood, to live only for self is sinful and animal.” 

In the treatment of the question of the sacred 
Scriptures, the views now taken by scholarly conserv- 
ative critics remind one frequently of the views, stated 
so vigorously by Robert Barclay. 

Although the preachers are slow to acknowledge 
it, the women all over America at least, in church and 
out of it, are rapidly coming to the place assigned 
them by the Quakers. 

A few years ago, I entered upon a new sphere of 
duty in the school-room, and because it was new, I 
expressed some doubt of my being able to succeed 
in it. My superintendent said to me: “Mr. Wright, 
you can get along with these young people if you 
can love them.” And I learn that he was giving only 
a concrete example of a fundamental principle in Ped- 
agogy. For from Kindergarten to College, there can 
be no true teaching and no genuine discipline with- 
out the loving heart.. You can not get along by pre- 
tending to love. You must love and be ready to 
show your love by infinite patience and self-sacrifice. 
The great doctors of Pedagogy teach us this doctrine, 
which is one of the fundamental principles of Quak- 
erism. And this, no doubt, explains the fact that 
Quakers have long been noted for teachers of un- 


93 


usual success in their work. They have been prac- 
ticing this principle from native kindliness of heart 
long before its enunciation by the doctors of the 
science. Their example has been contagious. Al- 
though there are few schools from which the rod has 
been banished, beating is not resorted to one-fiftieth as 
Often as it was seventy-five years ago. 

I have thus’ given you a few quotations from 
my own limited reading, and almost wholly from my 
own private library, and had I time, I could give you 
many more; but it is sufficient to convince us, I feel, 
that the belated world is rapidly coming on in the di- 
rection marked out by the early Quakers, and that 
principles held sacred by them, and for holding which 
they were persecuted and considered fanatics, are com- 
ing to be the common possession of the rank and file 
of our fellow-men. 


Seth H. Ellis: 

-“Tt is our custom, generally, in such gatherings as 
this, to allow opportunity for expression, and it seems 
almost cruel to pass such papers and such truths as we 
have had to-day and omit discussion. 

“Discussion is the hammer which clinches truth, 
and I am afraid we are going to lose lots of this by not 
being able to thus fix it in the mind. But the commit- 
tee was afraid to arrange for discussion lest something 
might arise to mar the harmony of the occasion. This 
fear does not seem.to have been well grounded, but lack 
of time will not now permit any departure from the pro- 


gtam as printed.” 


TO WAYNESVILLE, OHIO. 


BY 


EsTHER S. WALLAcE, RICHMOND, INDIANA. 


“Tt is with tender memories that I dedicate this 
little poem to Waynesville, Ohio, the birthplace of 
Emily Lathrop Stratton.” 


(A Prelude.) 


When Man’s journeying first began, 
~And Adam saw the moon and sun 

The hills and mountains rising grand 
The rivers sweeping through the land; 
The grass so green, the waving trees 

The floating clouds and scented preted 
And animals that roam at will, 

Beside the stream, or up the hill; : 
The birds that cleft the air in flight, 
And sang their songs by day or night; 
The twinkling stars, shining through the blua, 
Proclaimed a force he never knew. 


So pondering, Adam looked on high 
And said “He lives there in the sky.” 
’Twas thus. religion had its birth 
And came to dwell upon the earth. 


At last Man’s inner being saw 

The God cf Nature, in His law. 

And on rude altars made of wood 

He worshipped Him he deemed so good. 


No “Star of Bethlehem” had they, 
To guide them on its shining way; | 
But blindly on, from year to year, 
They lived a life of hate and fear. 
For track of blood, or ritual’ art, 
Ne’er saved a soul or won a heart; 


95 


But earnest prayer and deeds of love 
Does link this werld to that above. 


3ut, lo! one hundred years ago, 
\mong the hills of Ohio; 

1 little church was planted here 

ty humble hearts, in fervent prayer. 
ind you have kept alive the flame 
“hey kindled here in Jesus’ name. 
ind so we celebrate this year 

Nith loyal hearts and loving cheer. 


A hundred years is but a day 

To Him who spread the Milk ky-Way. 
A hundred years is but an hour, 

To Him who is Supremest Power. 

In Nature’s plan; a hundred years, 

- With all its hepes and joys and fears, 
Is but a span, in which to grow; 
The ripple of life’s ebb and flow 

- Washes the dust of Earth away 

*. And bleaches white the fallen clay. 
The same great hand created all, 
The Ocean, and the Sand so smali: 
But Ocean’s surge, and billow’s roar, 
That come and go upon the shore, 
Would over-sweep the fertile land, 
But for the little grains of sand. 
So we will like this Quaker band, 
Unto the little grains of sand — 
That keep within the bounds of sense 
The surging sea of opulence: 

That overrules the law of right, 

And substitutes the one of ‘might. 


When Fox first knew the “Light within,” 
Revealing Truth, reproving Sin, 

He pondered long upon the theme, 
The Christ-like robe, without a seam, 
It hung about him like a cloud, 

It importuned him, long and loud; 

To make his revelation known, 

From Peasant hut to Kingly throne, 
Not Pope, Nor Priest, nor Bishop grand 
Controls God’s grace within his hand. 


96 


The common people, as of yore, 
Looked gladly in this open door. 
First they doubted, then they saw ~ 
The Glory of Divinest Law. = 


Truth so mighty traveled fast — 

Held men’s souls within its grasp. 
The strong, the meek, alike were slain, 
And prisons groaned with human pain, 
Till far beyond in lands unknown 
They: found a refuge and a home. 


No wiser man than Willian Penn, 

E’er sought to rule the hearts of men; 
From his wise counsel, still there lives 

The grace to love, the law to give; 

Until triumphant notes were heard 

And soothed men’s hearts like song of bird; 
Its echo reached the western wild 

Where sturdy men, to lisping child, 

Breathed from the breath of virgin sod 

The priceless boon, to worship God. 


The man is gone, the child grown gray, 
Who first came seeking truth their way. 
The virgin sod is richest loam; 

The cabin is a sumptuous home; 

The cart, the stage, with rattling tire, 
Has given place to coach of fire, 

That cuts the air like sparrow’s wing 
And speeds. through space unwavering. 
Till here within this fertile vale, 

We bind a link that cannot fail. 

A band of love, a chain of power, 
Encircles us from this sweet hour: 
And friend is friend, no matter where 
He learned to lisp his childish prayer. 
For Christ alone the gulf can span, 

That separates the heart of man, 

From all that’s loyal, true and good, 
Unto the human brotherhood. 


Oh, Father, Lord! To-day we make 
A solemn pledge for conscience sake. 


97 


We dedicate ourselves anew 

To only see the good and true, 

In every friend we chance to ‘meet, 
In every httman soul ‘we greet:- 

For God is God, and Christ our King; 
Let all created ‘beings sing 

A song of praise, an anthem grand, 
That reaches souls in every land. 


All creeds have fled, 
All rituals dead; 

And face to face 
With Christian grace 
Men speak the Word 
And it is heard. 

The law of love 
From God above, 

Is all the creed 

That humans need 
To banish fear, 

And bring us near 
The Christ divine, 
That from all time 
Gave men the right 
To mind the Hght, 
That shines within; 
And so doth win, 
From dark and doubt, 
And every route, 
That leads astray, - 
From perfect day. 


The eye to see, the ear to hear, 

Falls soitly on the listening ear, 

That know’s ‘the voice of God within, - 
Commending right, reproving: sin. 

And so this hundred -years has brought 
A larger life, a grander thought. 

Men cease to fear and learn to love, - 
And round the “Great White Throne Above.” 
With heart to heart, and hand to hand, 

A conguering host united stand; 

-For God, and Truth, Supremest good, 
Unto the human brotherhoad., 


A Church that meets the present need, 
Must teach of love and not of creed; 
And make men feel that life, not death, 
Brings God to them im every breath. 


The “Broad-brim Hat” and “Coat of Gray,” 
Have done their work, and had their day. asthe 
The tender Thee and proper Thou 

Suill blesses us, we scarce know how. ° 

And out of all that wondrous Past 

Oh may we gain our aim at last; 

For all the grand, good gone before, _ 

Has smoothed our path, and leit the door 

Ajzr, where we the glory may behold, 

The “half.of which .can.ne’r be told.” 


The Silk Crape Cap and Kerchief white 
Sull hold sweet memory of the night. 
And Mother's dress of sober gray, 
Grows dearer to us, day by day. 

For, oh! the love, the tenderness, 

That came to us in Quaker dress. 

All honor, then, to those who bore 
The brand of hate, and stood before 
Rulers and Kings, for conscience sake; 
E’en +o the gallows, and the stake. 
Their work was bravely, nobly met, 
They suffered much without regret, 
And deemed it honor, to their God, 

To tread the path their Master trod. 
And Ye who come with firmer tread 
Step lightly on our honored deat 
Reverently touch “The cloth of gold” 
That holds them im its-ample fold 

And honor, praise and reverence give 
To those who conqner while they live. 
For all the world just now is tiie 

Wh seeking after higher life 

And we rejoice the fact to know 

That friends were first the seed to sow 
That out of Silence cometh: Power, 
For grace and strength in every hour. 
Only when God's voice is heard, 

Can human lips e’en speak the word 


99 


That iifts men out of doubt and sin 
Unto the Living Christ within. 


Oh Christ! of God! Ch love divine! 
We hail thee King, in every clime, 

And give ourselves, both great and small, 
To live, to win, to conquer all, 

And crown our “Lord the Lord of AIL” 


The thoughts which were pressing for utterance 
beamed through moistened eyes and found. expression 
in a soft and tender clapping oi hands throughout the 
~ audience. 


“HAS QUAKERISM A VITAL MESSAGE FOR 
THE WORLD TO-DAY? 


BY WILSON S. DOAN. 


For 1500 years the Jewish Church carried a mes- 
sage. But when the veil of the temple was rent in 
twain, that message in a large measure departed. The 
Holy of Holies itself falls by the battering rams of the 
army of Titus and like the Wandering Jew, the chosen 

eople are without a temple, without a land, without 
a time and without a message. 
“And thus forever with reverted look 
The mystic volume of the world they read 
Spelling it backward like a Hebrew book 


Till life becomes a legend of the dead.’ 
— Longfellow. 


In the shadow of the pyramids, Greek philosophy 
was born, and transplanted to Mars Hill it bore to 
the world a message of art unparalleled, and litera- 
ure that became the carrier of Christianity; nay, 
more, it even bere the message of a personal God and 
of an immortal soul; but after many wanderings for 
a thousand years around the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean it became retrospective. It closed the gates of 
original inquiry. It lived upon its history rather than 


tais strange eventful history is second childish- 
and mere oblivion.” 

Daniel Webster as the champion of the idea of 
a2 unitod federal government bore a message to the 


101 


republic that has immortalized his name, but when 
in the course of human events his countrymen de-- 
manded that he bear not only a message of federation 
and union but also one of freedom and liberty, he 
failed to bear that message and his fellow-citizen, . 
the distinguished Whittier, wrote of him: 


“Let not the land once proud of him. 
Insult him now 

Nor brand with deeper shame 
His dim dishonored brow. 


But let its humbler sons instead 
From sea to lake 

A long lament as for the dead 
In sadness make.” 


A nation, a man, a religious organization’ without 
a message is dead. ‘he telegraph wire encircles the 
globe, the wire, battery, receiver, transmitter, all parts 
of a modern telegraph system may be there, but what 
is it without a message? Of no more use than when 
the wire was the alloyed metal in the mountains. 
When David was king and waited between the Gates 
of the City and his watchmen on the housetops look- 
ing for some messenger to bear the king word as to 
-whether his son survived or perished, the watchmen 
Saw one coming atar off and called to the King, “Be- 
hold, a messenger,” and David said he bringeth good. 
tidings, but Absalom was already slain and the young” 
man from the scéne of battle—the messenger—knew 
it not, and was without a message. 

Is the Society of Friends a messenger without: 
a message? Have we ceased to seek new truth? Is 
our view all retrospective? If so, we are the wire 
without the electricity. We are the potter’s wheel turn- 
ing without the clay, we are a ship without a rudder 
or helm or compass, driftwood on the ocean of human 


102 


history. If we are without a message we are not 
the growing tree with its myriads of cells all teeming 
with life, with its leaves, its flowers and its fruits, but 
we are the petrified tree. “I am the true vine and 
my father is the husbandman, every branch in me- 
that beareth not fruit, he taketh away.” 


“A life of nothing, nothing worth, 
From that first nothing, e’re his birth 
To that last nothing under earth.” 


Our forefathers bore vital messages to this world. 
Their souls were on fire with them. When the first 
dawn of the springtime of the reformation came, Wick- 
liffe, Chaucer and Erasmus were like the first green 
blades in the springtime, coming, upward from the cold 
earth of creed and dogma, looking upward under the 
warming rays of the rising sun of righteotisness. But 
on and on the plant grew, nurtured by the rays of 
increasing knowledge and intelligence, until it became 
in the Pea of Luther and Calvin, a mighty tree. 

But the springtime, under the heat of great re- 
ligious discussions, changed into the warmth of sum- 
mer and the tree of the reformation brought forth 
its. lower in the persons*of Fox and Penn and Bar- 
clay. Heretofore it had been a battle of creeds, one 
creed breaking another by force of legislative enact- 
ment or force of arms. But the Quaker came with 
a message of absolute emancipation. It was a mes- 
sage declaring unconditional liberty — not to Catholic, 
not to Prespyterian, not to Episcopalian, not to Pur- 
itan, but to every man. It broke the chains that bound 
the human intellect. It rent in shreds from top to 
bottom, the veil of creed before the Holy of Holies 
of every human heart and left man his own priest to 
stand beiore the mercy seat of his own heart and to 
follow the Divine Light that burns between the cheru- 


103 


bim of the human conscience upon the one side, and 
the human judgment on the other, God Immanent, in 
the human soul. It was the message that declared: 


“One faith alone, so broad that all mankind 
Within themselves, its living witness find : 
The soul’s communion with eternal mind : 
The spirit’s law, the inward rule and guide 
Scholar and peasant, lord and serf allied.” 

— Whittier. 


They bore the message of freedom, of liberty, of 
intelligence and of knowledge. _The founding of 
Miami monthly meeting upon this spot a hundred years 
ago was a message written in the hardships of pioneer 
life against human slavery and the ring of the pioneer’s 
ax in the primeval forest as it echoed on these hill- 
sides was as much a protest for freedom as the roar 
of the cannon at Gettysburg and at Appomattox. It 
was a message that helped to make it possible for the 
Northwest Territory, for Ohio and Indiana, for Il- 
linois, Michigan and Wisconsin to say what New 
York or Pennsylvania, what the New England states 
cannot say, We never were in bondage, we were 
free born. 

But has no spark of this fire divine come along 
the line to you and me? Has the fire ceased to burn 
upon the altar? Sometimes it helps us to see our mis- 
sion to eliminate. The telegraph is made for one 
message, the telephone for another, the post for 
ancther and there are some that’ must be borne by 
freight. So with God’s messengers, they are not all 
designed to carry the same message. The Salvation 
Army has a great and vital message. Its work in our 
great cities is worthy of the highest praise. It is 
bringing the message of salvation to many a lost soul, 
souls lost to society, souls lost to friends, lost to 
church and to home and to their creator. But I 


104 


have never believed that the Society of Friends in any 
of its branches was designed to carry this message. 
To save lost souls is a great message, but it is not 
the only message. Let the Salvation Army and Rescue 
Mission and our Doors of Hope carry their message, 
but the vital message of Quakerism of to-day is not 
to save the lost souls, but it is to keep. souls from 
being lost. 


A wrecking crew is very essential when some boat 
is on the reefs and rocks, but the shipyard that sends 
out the great boats ready to bear the commerce of 
the world is certainly much more useful to society. 
Every meeting of the Society of Friends should be 
not so much a soul-saving station as a character build- 
ing ship-yard, sending forth from her doors and from 
her schools and colleges, young men and women whom 
you know will not make shipwrecks on life’s voyage. 
Whatever may be our idea of the evolution of the 
Christian religion or of the evolution of the Chris- 
tian civilization and of human society, one thing is 
sure: Humanity has been building a stairway from 
the bottomless pit of savagery, up through the ages, 
step by step, to the sweetness of the civilization of the 
twentieth century. The vital message of Quakerism 
in the past has been to add steps to that stairway, 
lifting civilization higher and higher. 


When George Fox and his followers broke the 
bonds of dogma and creed and bore a message of un- 
conditional religious liberty to the world, Christianity 
leaped forward five hundred years; two hundred and 
fifty years have passed by and the Christian world 
everywhere is longing to accept it. It is making its 
inroads into the heart of the Catholic Church itself 
and mankind everywhere is learning as Oliver Wendell 
Holmes said of Whittier: 


105 


“Not thine to lean on priesthood’s broken reed 
o barriers caged thee in a baggot’s fold 
Did zealots ask to syllable thy creed 
Thou saidst ‘Our Father’ and thy creed was told.” 


When William Penn came with his message of 
liberty and his idea of a representative government 
as witnessed by his holy experiment on the banks of 
the Delaware, he added a long and high step to the 
stairway of human progress ‘and set upon the top 
thereof the torch of liberty, the light of which has. 
encircled the globe. When Mary Dyer, from the scaf- 
fold on Boston Common on which she died, sent forth 
the message to the general court of Massachusetts Bay 
Colony, that your laws of intolerance must be re- 
pealed, King Charles upon his throne heard it in fear 
and the next provincial charter he granted gave to 
the world the first legal establishment of religious 
liberty, given at the request of Mary Dyer’s husband, 
before the throne. 

These are steps in this stairway that lead from 
earth to heaven; they are established forever and the 
last heir of all the ages shall travel over them, in joy. 

But the stairway is not finished; it will never 
be finished until it reaches the far-off heights of the 
Elysian Fields, when “the knowledge of the Lord shall 
cover the earth as the waters do the sea.” We have 
’ some vital messages and some definite steps in this 
stairway on lumans progress that we must lay or 
another shall take our crown. 

Civilization has grander steps to build than have 
ever been built. We are far ftom the golden rule. 
The world has not yet learned what is the greatest 
heroism. Our heroes of war, our Custers and our 
Hobsons are called our bravest and most patriotic men. 
We spend more for arms and preparations for War 
than for the higher education of ous youth. We cul- 


106 ‘ 


tivate this great remnant of barbarism and we do it 
in the name of the extension of commerce and civi- 
lization. We do it in the name of humanity, we call 
it “taking up the white man’s burden” and “the Anglo- 
Saxon’s mission” and even more we do it in the name 
of the extension of the Kingdom of the Prince of 
Feace. Never did the times call more loudly than 
now for some organization to teach our young men 
that it is a braver thing to live a brave life in a 
black coat than to die a brave death in yellow leggins 
and jacket. To teach that it is a more patriotic 
service to be turning the wheels of some factory or 
following the plow or honestly dealing in merchandise 
than to be drilling in an army post or sailing on a 
man of war. Five years have scarcely passed since in 
the name of humanity, the popular press, with the 
yellow journals in the land, the politician and pro- 
fessional military man, under the guise of war for 
humanity, caused this nation to turn its back on 
the record of a century and trample under foot the 
fundamental principles of our revolutionary fathers 
and I am sorry to say that many pulpits joined in 
this clamor. Quakerism has a higher message of civi- 
lization for the world than that. It has a message 
of higher patriotism than ever came from San Juan 
Hill or Manila Bay. The message of Quakerism is 
for a higher civilization, not only in the Philippines 
and South Africa, but a higher civilization in Wash- 
ington and London and truer representatives of pa- 
triotism in Congress and in Parliament. Ours is a 
message of peace. While other pulpits pray for the 
success of arms and send up their thanks for victory 
through the smoke of battle, we will erect within 
our borders no altar to the “god of war,” but within 
our hearts we shall build an altar to’the Prince of Peace 
and upon it there shall never be any bloody sacrifice. 


107 


We shall, declare the message of Charles Sumner, 
“There is no peace that is not honorable, there is no 
war that is not dishonorable.” We shall teach the 
world in the language of Longfellow: 


“Were half the power that fills the world with terror 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts 
Given to redeem the world from error 


; There were no need of arsenals and forts.” 


Never was such need of this message to the world 
and never such promise of fruitful harvest as now. 
Take up the prophetic declaration: “Beat thy swords 
into plow shares and thy spears into pruning hooks” 
and the twentieth century wiil see the fulfilment of 
this phophecy. The statesmanship of such men as 
Charles Sumner and John Bright and James G. Blaine 
shall be the anvil upon which that sword shall be 
beaten and the peace-loving songs of Whittier and 
Longfellow and Tennyson shall be the hammer that 
shall fall in strokes of sweet cadence upon that anvil 
and Andrew Carnegie’s Temple of Peace and the 
Church shall be the smith-shop, and the Mighty Arm 
of Jehovah shall complete the work. t 

All the battles for freedom have not yet been 
won. ‘There are certain inalienable rights that are in- 
herent. Among these are the rights to follow any 
lawful line of trade and commerce and upon the other 
side the inalienable right to labor. We live in an age 
of combination when there is too much danger of 
individuality being lost. The business man has formed 
a partnership, and the partnership has formed a cor- 
poration, and the corporation has formed a trust; and 
every step has moved us farther from the individual 
and in too many cases by this removal we get away 
from the human conscience and from the sympathy 
of the human heart and cheapen the value of human 


108 


life and make man a machine whose only value is the 
nun nber of nails he can drive in a day or the number 
f bolts he can make at the forge. 

These organizations are but the natural outgrowth 
of our industries. They are part of the evolution of 
society and they will remain, and should remain; but 
they must be taught their, proper place. Let the 
Church, let the Society of Friends teach the corpora- 
tion and teach the trust the true law, “Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them.” 

The combination of capital upon the one hand 
is met by the union of labor on the other and the 
individual in the union of labor is lost as much as 
he is in the union of capital. Ever since that far- 

f day, when in the language of Elizabeth Brown- 
ing “God's curse became a blessing” and the edict of 
heaven was “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread,” every man has the inherent and individual 
right of labor and is entitled to its reward. The 
crimes that have been committed in the name of labor 
in the last decade, cover alinost the whole catalogue 
from provoke to riot, murder and treason. Men have 
been denied, in the name of labor, the right to labor 
while their children suffered for bread. Their homes 
burned over their heads, fathers and brothers are 
murdered and the press at large is silent upon the 
question. The labor union is also a part ci the evolu- 
tion of human society. It will remain and should re- 
main, but it must learn the message that Quakerism 
has been repeating these two and a half « centuries, 

the absolute supremacy of the individual. When labor 
will cease to be at war with labor and when capital 
has learned the goiden rule then labor will cease to 
be at war with capital and that fundamental principal 
of Quakerism shail be established in human society. 


109 


The supremacy of the individual. Bear them this 
message: 


To right’s eternal law, the beggar at the gate 
The toiler in the field 

The tradesman with his ware, and the great magnate 
All alike must yield 


Our grandfathers by their votes and testimony 
by day and by that faithful old “Quaker carriage” 
carrying some fugitive toward the north star by night, 
were solving the question of slavery. They joined 
in the union of forces that removed that dark stain 
from the emblem of cur country. But there is a 
slavery worse than that of the body, there are chains 
stronger than those made of iron. When Abraham 
Lincoln was candidate for United States senator, he 
made that distinguished speech before the Republican 
convention of Iliinois that has immortalized his name. 
“This nation cannct live one-half slave and one-half 
free.” It is equally true to-day that this nation can 
not live one-half drunk and one-half sober. The saloon 
or the church must go. 


In 1848 when William H. Seward was governor 
cf New York, he came to Cleveland to make a speech. 
He knew full well the ideas of the people of the 
Western Reserve and to the consternation of his po- 
litical friends, he declared, “Slavery is wrong and there 
is but one way to right it, and that is to abolish it, 
‘and you and I must see to it that we do it.” What- 
ever may be your idea of temperance there is one 
thing sure, the salcon as an institution is wrong and 
there is but one way to right it, and that is to pro- 
hibit it. This is a vital message the Society of Friends 
should bear. Let not our conscience be lulled into a 
sleep of indifference. Levi Coffin, Lucretia Mott, the 
Society of Friends at large, bore no uncertain mes- 


110 


sage upon the slavery question. Our great cities, 
often ruled in the interests of breweries, are in the 
bondage of vice and the thralldom of greed. We are 
unworthy of the heirship that is cast upon us if’ we 
do not inscribe upon our banners, “The saloon must 
go,” and like brave soldiers march over the rough hills 
of prejudice, scorn and ridicule until we plant that 
banner upon the ruins of every brewery and saloon 
from Maine to the Philippines; let us bear that 
message, not on election day alone, but on every day in 
the year. It is a message of education, it is a mas- 
sage of morals, it is a message of good society, it is 
a message of good business as well as a political and 
religious message. 


This, Oh, This, is a fight for humanity’s sake 

Oh land of freedom, awake, awake, 

And drive from thy shores this curse and this woe 
And write in thy statutes, “the saloon must go.” 


Time forbids that I mention the message we 


should bear to the inferior and down-trodden races of - 


‘the earth as well as the great message of intelligence 
and knowledge we should bear to the young men and 
young women within our borders who are to help 
shape the destiny of the twentieth century. The 
message of universal brotherhood and the message of 
increased knowledge and intelligence must go hand in 
hand. Suffice it that I sum it all in one picture. I 
see a church that was not born to die, in it are the 
elements of everlasting life, like the pillars of Jason 
and Boaz of Solomon’s Temple, it stands for strength 
upon the one side and beauty upon the other. Be- 
hold it! the intuitive knowledge of God in the human 
soul is its foundation, righteous lives are its walls, earth 
is its beams and heaven its rafters, conscience is the un- 
stained window through which the light of truth 


111 


enters, inspired intelligence is its pulpit, the sweet 
cadence of lives lived in harmony with the will of their 
Creator is its music, each one who enters its portals 
is its priest, convictions of the human soul are its 
creed, and the freedom of thought its dogma, the olive 
branch of peace is its adornment, and justice its pil- 
lars, the human heart its altar, and the atmosphere that 
envelopes and permeates it is love. Let philosophy dig 
deep, we will gladly go with it to the bottom; it 
will never dig deeper than our foundation, God in the 
human heart. Let science climb from peak to peak in 
the realms of knowledge, hand in hand we will go with 
it, knowing that all truth wherever found, is: divine. 
Creed and dogma and skepticism by such a message 
will be robbed of the very ground on which they stand 
and shall go down into vblivion 
“Unwept, unhonored and unsung.” 


Seth H. Eilis: 


“We have with us to-night the Preside of. Earl- 
ham College, from whom I am sure we will all be glad 
to hear.” 


Robert L. Kelley, President of Earlham College, 
said in part: 

“JT did not come here to make a speech and it would 
be quite unpardonable for me to occupy much of your 
time. 

“Tt is a time for reminiscences and for individuals 
who can connect old times with the passing times, for 
those who know something of the foundations of Quak- 
erism. * * * | have the honor to stand for the 
educational principles of Quakerism in this time in 
which we live. May I say to you, Friends, that we, 
who are engaged in educational work, have very many 
opportunities to go out in the various fields of labor 

and proclaim the principles of Quakerism. We are 
glad to de so and are glad of the reception we get 
when we give the world our Quaker ideals of educa- 
tion: have theught, as those who have founded it 
have come before my mind, that we younger men are 
not entitled to the credit we get.. We are very much 
indebted for those ideals we are proclaiming to the 
fathers and mothers who established the meetings here 
upon this ground. We are simply formulating again, 
and stating in slightly different words those grand 
ideals which had their foundation in the institutions 
founded by our forefathers here. I take this oppor- 
tunity to put the credit where it belongs, and insist 
that the ideals of the guarded education did not place 
education before the building of character, but that 


113 


character and conscience firsi, is an idea we have bor- 
rowed from the fathers.” 


Professor J. B. Wright, Harveysburg, O.: 

Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee to-night, as 
we bow down before Thee in silent worship. We thank 
Thee for the blessed inheritance that has come to us 
as the children and grandchildren of the men and 
women who ‘knew God’ and followed and obeyed Him 
in the early days here.. And we thank Thee that Thy 
Spirit is just as ready to operate in the world now as 
then; that Thou art just; and that our opportunities 
are just as great as theirs were then. We thank Thee 
that this inheritance is not in name only. Grant that 
these, our meetings before Thee from time to time to 
consider the richness and blessedness of our inheritance 
may be the means of grace in Thy hands to quicken 
in us the same spirit of consecration and cordial devo- 

ion; that we may come into a deeper knowledge of 
Thee and a better understanding of Thy will concérn- 
ing us. We know it is a blessed thing to be led of 
God. Grant that we may grow in grace and in power. 
And to Thy name will be ascribed all the glory now 
and forever. Amen!” 
wei, FL Elis : 

“Tt is proper now for us to close our session that 
we may have peaceful rest.” 


——SEVENTH DAY, 9:45 A. M—— 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SAMUEL 
LINTON. 

MARY BAILEY, JR., WAYNESVILLE, OHIO. 


Samuel Linton was born in Bucks county, Penn- 
sylvania, twelfth month, seventeenth, 1741. 

His first ancestor who came to America was John 
Linton. While he was a student at Oxford, England, 
he was sent with a company of soldiers to visit a 
Qudker meeting to ascertain if anything was said 
agdinst the Church of England. While there he was. 
so*impressed with the simplicity, faith and earnestness 
of the Friends that he became a convert to their re- 
ligion and engaged in the ministry for a number of 
years. He was an associate of William Penn’s, both be- 
fore and after he came to this country. Desiring 
more freedom and the privilegé to worship God as 
their consciences dictated, he and his wifé came to 
America in 1792. His son, Benjamin Linton, Samuel's. 
father, was a learned and able man and noted astron- 
omer. 

Samuel Linton was raised on a farm and learned 
the weaver’s trade. 

In 1775 he married Elizabeth Harvye. They 
had three sons and two daughters, David, Nathan, 
James, Elizabeth and Jane. In 1802, about four years 
after his wife’s death, he with his five children left. 


115 


his Baéiert hore and started in a wagon fot Ohio. 
They came over the mountains. to Pittsburg, where 
he bought a, raft, on which they floated down the Ohio 
to Cincinnati, thence they came by wagon to Wayneés- 
ville. Here he purchased 4 very humble home, with 
some farming land, and followed his trade with much 
success: He soon became a prominent man in the 
community. He had strong muscles, which counted 
for much in the pioneer days in a heavily wooded 
country; and he had a vigorous and practical mind to 
direct the labor of himself and others in the work of 
opening up a home in the wilderness. 

The bountiful crops grown on the new, rich soil, 
and the increase of herds and flock soon enabled him 
to extend a hospitality that seemed instinctive. The 
latch string of his home was always out. Any man 
with an honest face and no place to lay his head that 
night was welcome. Newly arrived emigrants from 
the old Home in the East would be taken in and fed 
and lodged until a leg cabin could be put up to shelter 
them. Traveling ministers could tell in their journals 
of a warm welcome at Samuel Linton’s. 

A committee of Friends appointed by an Eastern 
Yearly Meeting to visit the Indians on the border rest- 
ed themselves and their horses and went on their way 
rejoicing. And all this because the man was willing to 
spend himself for others. 

In 1804 he bought five hundred acres of land on 
Todd’s Fork, three miles northeast of Wilmington, 

‘where the next year he and his family located. 

He was a true and valuable member of the Society 
of Friends, and his descendants to the present genera- 
tion have kept up the traditions of the family in that 
respect. 

He and his family | were members. of Westland 
Monthly Meeting in Pennsylvania until Miami Month- 


116 


ly Meeting was organized, of which he was the first 

clerk. Then, after they moved to Todd’s Fork, Center 
Monthly } Meeting was established, and they became 
members of it. 

He was a good, kind father, an jnieetleceue and 

far-seeing man. He had a lively interest in national 
politics and a clear understanding of the general goy- 
ernment’s policy toward the new states and territories 
in the West ae his letters, written after he came 
to Ohio, to friends in Philadelphia, we see he took 
great interest and pleasure in the peace and bases 
of the settiement in the West. 
_. These letters, which were written in the years 
4804 to uae contain much interesting and well-written 
history of the early inhabitants and their progress and 
the condition of national affairs. Many passages of 
his published correspondence show a keen sense of 
humor. 

His second son, Nathan, was appointed County 
Surveyor when Clinton county was organized, which 
office he held ior forty years. In assisting the cause of 
education he was foremost and took an active part in 
the opening of public highways in his néighborhood. 
He was among the first to introduce and encourage 
the growth of fine wool, and the propagating of choice 
fruit, 

He had a clear and active mind and was stitute 
at cighty years of age, for all county surveys. 

Nathan ‘Linton was a consistent friend and had 
the respect of all honored citizens. 

Samuel Linton died the twenty-seventh of tvelith 
morth, 1823, at the home of his daughter, Elizabeth. 
Satte chwaite, at Waynesville, Ohio. 

Honest, truthful, self-reliant, helpful to others, he 
left a name that his descendants should cherish as an 
heir-loom. 


ABIJAH O’NEALL. 


. 


ELLA B. KEYS, WAYNESVILLE, OHIO. 


While looking backward that we may better un- 
derstand and appreciate Miami Monthly Meeting, it 
3ay be seen that a iarge amount of credit is due to 
Abijah O’Neal, the grandfather of George T. and the 
late Abijah P. O’Neall. 

He is described by a contemporary as being five 
feet eight inches high and round-shouldered and hay- 
ing a stout well-knit frame, light brown hair, gray 
eyes, long upper lip and strong square jaw. His head 
Wa’ massive, requiring a number eight hat. He hada 
broad well developed forehead and a face that dis- 
played great firmness. Such indeed was his character 
that to propose was to do. “ He might break but he 
did not bend.” 

He had some peculiarities. He chose not to sleep 
on feathers but instead preferred a bed of fresh clean 
straw. At a time when the use of 2 une liquors 
was almost universal he was sirictly abstemious. He 
never drank tea or coffee and never used tobacco. He 
wore his hair closely clipped and always had four holes 
cut in the crown of his hat. The explanation of this 
habit was that ever after the brutal assault during the 
Revolution, he suffered much from nervous headache 
and wished a palliative. 

Abijah O’Neall was born near Winchester, Va., 
Jan. 21, 1762. When seventeen years old he removed 


118 


to South Carolina and settled on Bush River, now 
Newberry ‘district, where the family passed through 
the bloody scenes of the Revolution, many times suffer- 
ing alike from both Whig and Tory. Only his relig- 
ious faith and strong parental control kept young 
O’Neall, a passive non-combatant, but he was not 
exempt from brutal outrage. In January, 1781, when - 
Col. Tarleton was moving against the Patriotic forces, 
which resulted in the Battle of Cowpens, January 17, 
1781, the British forces were encamped on the O’Neall 
lands, and Abijah was taken before a number of Eng- 
lish officers, who demanded information as to the posi- 
tion and number of Morgan’s army, but he would not * 
give it. When the officers found they could not get by 
threats or persuasion the desired information, they as- 
saulted him, with their swords until his scalp hung in 
tatters from his head and he was left but little better 
than dead. In an insensible condition he was carried to 
the home of John Kelly, whose daughter, Anna, proved 
the good angel who nursed him back to life and 
eventually into health, and whom he rewarded by a 
lifetime love and devotion, their marriage being solem- 
nized according to the rites of Friends in Bush River 
Meeting, Dec. 19, 1784. 

The following years of Abijah O’Neall’s life were 
busy ones yet he never ceased to be inflamed by what 
he considered the great wrong of human slavery and 
the ills of rearing a family under its blighting influence. 
His wife was by inheritance a large slave holder. . The 
‘Ordinance of 1787 and the opening for settlement of 
the territory north of the Ohio river, opened a new 
field for those who wished to escape from evils which 
they could not control. In May, 1798, Abijah left 
home on horseback to hunt for a future abode. His 
tour of exploration occupied about two months. In 
autumn, he and his brother-in-law, Samuel Kelly, 


\ 


119 


bought of Dr. Brown, 3,1103 acres of land lying on 
the east side of the Little’ Miami river, north of 
Caesar’s creek, near the town of W ay. nesville, which 
then contained but seven families. 


Abijah and his wife had much trouble in freeing 
their slaves. The laws of South Carolina would not 
allow a master to release a slave without giving bond 
that the slave should not become a public charge and 
that he should not be submissive to the laws through 
the commission of a crime. Ail could not give such a 
bond and many were not willing todo so. Those freed 
caused much trouble, Abijah “having to make three 
trips to South Carolina on account of their misdeeds 
and general worthlessness. 


In the late summer all arrangements being com- 
pleted, Abijah went before Bush River Monthly Meet- 
ing, of which he was a member and asked for a cer- 
tificate of membership. After due deliberation the 
membership committee declined to grant the request 
and gave as a reason ior so doing, “ The expressed 
desire was not that of a sane man. The desire to take 
his family from their home and friends into the wilder- 
ness was so unreasonable as to show of itself an un- 
balanced mind and the request could not be granted.” 
Abijah denounced them in no measured terms as being 
hypocritical. That the stain of human blood was on 
their souls, that the Almighty would visit them with 
swift and sure punishment for their hypocrisy, that 
their meeting would be scattered to the four winds, 
that the members would seek an asylum elsewhere and 
their land be left as desolate as the plains of Arabia 
was a prediction which was fulfilled. In less than-+ten 
years from a membership ef one hundred families, 
but eleven of the original members remained. Over 
two hundred persons of whom kad united with the 


120 


meeting at Waynesville and in a few years the doors 
of the ‘meeting were closed forever. 

Near the close of September, 1799, the rath i 
train started and completed the journey in forty-two 
days. The route pursued from Newberry was by way 
of Greenville, through Saluda Gap, to Ashville, N. C., 
along the French Broad River, past Bald Mountain, 
to Greenville, Tenn., via Cumberland Gap, Lexington, 
Ky., Cincinnati, and Lebanon to Waynesville. Prac- 
| tically the same road remains the great thoroughfare 
| of travel from the southeast to the northwest to-day. 
The families that immigrated with them were 

Jesse and David Pugh, W illiam M ills, Robert Kelly, 
Isaac Perkins and two others, all being members of 
Bush River Monthly Meeting. 

On arrival at Waynesville the family moved into 
a cabin which stood where Michael Liddy now resides. 
During the winter some rude improvements were made 
on the property where William Frame now lives. It 
then became the O’Neall home and they, the first set- 
tlers east of the Little Miami. 

The family now being permanently located in 
their new home, Abijah turned his attention to the 
improvement of the country and the people with whom ~ 
his lot was cast. He was an excellent and hence a 
very busy surveyor. After providing for the imme- 
diate physical wants of his family he attended to their 
moral and intellectual wants. In 1802 he caused a 
school for his end other children to be taught in his 
own house by Joel Wright who also taught in 1804, 
1805 and 1807. Abijah was very kind hearted and 
gave a helping hand to all who needed assistance. 

He died suddenly in the prime of his life and 
full strength of manhood, May 11, 1823. His remains 
were laid to rest in an unmarked grave near the north- 
east corner of the Friends’ graveyard. 


121 


He was a strong-willed, self-reliant man, one born 
to be master of himself and of others, a leader among 
men, and a controller of events. 

To-day our praise is due him for the services he 
rendered the vicinity during his life and the descend- 
ants he has left to continue the work he.loved. 


“Can we forget that brave and hardy band 

Who made their homes first in this western land? 
Their names should be enrolled on history’s page 
To be preserved by each succeeding age. 


“They were the fathers of the mighty west, 
Their arduous labors Heaven above has blessed; 
Before them fell the forest of the plain, j 
And peace and plenty follow in the train” 


SAMUEL KELLY, SR: 


(MABEL WILSON, SELMA, OHIO.) 


About 1750 there emigrated from Kings county, 
Ireland, Timothy Kelly, his two sons, Samuel and 
John and his daughter, Abigail. 

They were of good family and wealthy, but the 
young men were too independent and energetic to sub- 
mit to the rule England had imposed upon the little 
isle, and seeing trouble in the distance came to America 
in search of entire freedom and peace. 

They settled in South Carolina on the Wateree 
river near the present site of the City of Camden. 

Five years after coming to America John Kelly, 
father of the subject of this sketch, married Mary 
Evans. She was of English descent, although born 
in Pennsylvania, and quite an able woman both 
physically and mentally. 

In 1762 the brothers moved to the District of 
Newberry on the Bush river and helped to found what 
is now Bush River Friends’ Meeting. 

John settled on the south and Samuel on the north 
side of the river and the old place, Springfield, was 
kept by the Kelly’s until Judge O’Neall’s death in 
1863. Slave holding was not then against the Disci- 
pline of the Friends’ Church and John Kelly, Samuel's 
father, owned quite a number, among them a young 
man whom he promised to liberate at his death; 
so this slave, to hasten his release, poisoned the water 
of a spring which his master particularly liked and 
caused his death in two weeks. 

This sad occurrence left the care of affairs to the 


) 


128 


mother and two elder sons, Isaac and Samuel, who 
were appointed executors. Isaac, as the elder son, 
inherited the estate, but three weeks after his mar- 
riage with Merris Gaunt and soon after his father’s 
death, he died, leaving the inheritance to Samuel. 

After his mother’s-death, Samuel was left in sole 
charge of the family and having raised and educated 
them all, he divided the property equally among them. 

Samuel was six fect high, broad shouldered and 
well proportioned. He had ‘the same clear Irish skin 
as his ancestors, the same honest blue eyes, straight 
nose, full forehead and auburn hair. He was always 
an active man, even in his old age, and he and his 
saddle horse Charlie were a common sight to his 
friends. 

On New Year’s day, 1788, at the age of twenty- 
seyen, he married Hannah Pearson, an English girl, 
daughter of Samuel and Mary Pearson, of Virginia. 

They were the devoted parents of eight children: 
Mary, who was married to Andrew Whittacre; Isaac, 
who died at the age of thirty; John, who married 
- Mary O’Neall and died at the age of thirty-four; 
Timothy, who married Avis Sleeper; Samuel, who 
first married Achsah Stubbs, three years after her 
death married Ruth Ann Gause and five years after 
her death Sarah Pine. He it is whom some of the 
older Friends may remember and three of whose four 
children we still find in our midst. The next child 
was Moses, who was killed by a falling log two years 
after they came to Ohio. Then Moses, Jr., who was 
born in Ohio and married Abigail Satterthwaite, and 
Anna, who died in her thirtieth year. Anna Kelly, 
Samuel’s sister, was married to Abijah O’Neall, about 
whom we have just heard and he and Samuel pur- 
chased from Dr. Jacob Roberts Brown the option on 
his three-thousand acre military claim, said to be sit- 


. 124 


-uated on the Little Miami river near Waynesville. 
Before starting to locate the claim, Samuel determined 
to rid himself of a great weight, namely, the owning 
of slaves, so he and his sister liberated all of their 
human property but two old ones, whom they brought 
to Ohio with them and cared for the rest of their 
lives. 

In September of 1798, Samuel and Abijah O’Neall 
started on horseback cn their nine hundred mile ride. 
Clothing for themselves and food for all, were car- 
ried on the backs of pack horses. Their journey was 
comparatively uneventful, and aiter hastily locking 
over most of the claim, they returned home, well 
pleased, and bought the laad. . 

Abijah was able Me start for his new home the 
next year, but Samuel’s business kept him from going 
until S September of 1807. 

They had both asked for their certificates jo 
membership to start a Meeting in the west, but were 
refused becatise their friends, or rather neighbors, 
said no sane men wotld choose such a home for their 
families; their answer was that they only went to 
ee a way for the rest of the Meeting, and from 
what Judge O’Neall says, we know how true this 
answer was, for “The exodus begun by Abijah O’Neall 

in- 1799 and Samuel Kelly in 1801, was followed so 
rapidly that Bush River Meeting melted away, like 
frost on a May morning, and in the lapse of the next 
six years the Meeting. which he had frequently seen 
attended by five hundred Friends had practically 
passed out of existence and in a few years more its 
doors were closed forever.” 

With Samuel Kelley came several of his neighbors, 
making quite a train across East Tennessee, by way of 
the Cumberland Gan, through central Kentucky, cross- 
ing. the Ohio at Cincinnati. Samuel-led the way on 


125 


horseback, picking out the best road and finding the 
most suitable places to ford the rivers and catnp, 
while the wagon with inis family and most valuable 
goods was driven by Wilk Furnas, at the head of the 
train. 

They met many difficulties, the hardest being the’ 
crossing of the Clinch mountain. Some places were 
so steep that it seemed almost impossible for a single 
horse to climb, but by putting two or three teams to 
one wagon, they managed to reach the top, only to 
find that the danger had just begun. Of course no 
erdinary brake would hold on such a slope, so they 
used stout ropes, and by tying them to the wagon 
and then taking a wrap around a tree, they could 
tet the wagon down as slowly as they wished. After 
forty days’ travel they at last reached Waynesville. 

Their first winter was spent with Abijah 
O’Neail, but early in the spring their new dwelling 
was completed and they socn made it an ideal home, 
a home where all who went felt better and richer for 
having lived where love, peace and a Christian spirit 
dwelt continually and shed their influence over all. 

Until the Meeting house was built, it was, in this 
fitting place that the little body of Friends held their 
silent communion with the Father or listened to the 
earnest plea of one of its members. 

Here Samuel and his wife lived, anited in their 
happiness until July of 1839, when at seventy-four 
years of age, the mother and wife was called to a 
higher duty and later, in 1851, at the age of ninety- 
_ ene years, the father followed. 

So passed away a true Quaker pioneer, one re- 
markable for his kindness and hospitality, one whose 
great moral and physical strength helped to elevate 
all who knew him. 


Seth H. Ellis: ' 


“What a grand thing it is that God does not. put 
it upon young men and women of to-day to cross those 
mountains. I thought I would ask at the close of 
these papers how many in the audience are descendants 
of these brave pioneers?” 

There were present in the audience at this time as 
follows: 


Descendants of Joel Wright, seven. 
Descendants of Robert Furnas, twenty-six. 
Descendants of Sammuel Linton, thirty. 
Descendants of Elijah O’Neall, five. 
Descendants of Samuel Kelley, six. 


THE WORK OF FRIENDS FOR PEACE AND 
ARBITRATION. 


(PROF. ELBERT RUSSELL, EARLHAM COLLEGE, 
RICHMOND, INDIANA.) 


There is an inherent difficulty in the task set me 
at this time. That influence which, for lack of a bet- 
ter term, we call Quakerism, has been almost without 
exception a purely spiritual force. It has not been 
embodied in great ecclesiastical organizations nor ex- 
pressed by means of political or military power. It is 
difficult to describe the achievements of such a force. 
Its work is so intangible that the historian cannot 
say with. certainty that any outcome is due solely 
to its influence; he cannot point with pride to un- 
questioned, tangible results. The peace work of 
Friends has, for the greatest part, consisted in keep- 
ing in operation those forces and influences that have 
tended to give a truer conception of Christianity, to 
enhance the feeling of brotherhood among men, and 
So to create an abhorrence of war. How shall we 
say when and where this influence, working often un- 
conscious of its origin, has mitigated the horrors of 
warfare or serve to prevent strife. How often has 
it not been the influence that led to results for which 
others got the credit when war was averted or peace 
hastened? Of this much we may be sure from the 
very nature of the case, viz., that the net results of 

the work that Friends have done in the world in behalf 


128 


of peace and arbitration, are far more numerous than 
any record outside God’s judgment book will ever 
show. We shall content ourselves to-day with re- 
viewing briefly the tangible work done by Friends and 
the influences set in motion by them looking toward 
the promotion of the reign of peace among nations. 


The first great contribution of the Friends to the 
cause of peace was their refusal to bear arms or fight. 
his is the best known part of their testimony against 
war, and has given them the name of non-residents. 
But this is only the negative aspect of their attitude. 
It only comes out with any emphasis in time of war, 
and then its force has always been lessened by the fart 
that as a practical attitude it locks so much like the 
attitude of treason or of cowardice. Of course the 
world has come to recognize that the Quaker’s refusal 
to fight arises from higher motives and has learned 
to respect his conscience, but the time of war is not 
the ie) when men are best prepared to appre- 
ciate the truth of their pesition. In time of peace this 
te eeee of non-resistance is not possible, and some 
more effective way oi teaching the world the evil of 
war is necessary for those times when men’s preju- 
dices are not strengthened by the passion and heat of 
conflict and when the reason is more open to con- 
viction. 


Yet I would not underestimate the power of such 
examples nor the influence for good of this practical 
demonstration to the world that Christian character 
is something incompatible with that of the warrior and 
that men may live without fighting even in times of 
carnage, and even so maintain their lives and rights 
in the midst of armed opposition and persecution. 
Such action starts discussion, compels men to review 
the grounds on which they insisted that fighting is 


129 


often a Christian duty and thus opens their. minds 
to the light of peace. 

Our opposition to war is but incidental to our 
conception of the Christian life. The first Friends 
did not specially attack war as an organized evil, but 
simply eschewed it as part of the devil's work, all of 
which they “denied.” When George Fox was offered 
the position of captain of a band of militia, he re- 
fused, because he lived “in the power of that life which 
removed the cause of all war.” Fox and his fol- 
lowers found war inconsistent with the teachings of 
jJesus-Christ. They could not conceive Him — the 
Love incarnate — shedding his fellow’s blood. Con- 
sequently they neglected and opposed war as they 
did everything springing from human selfishness and 
hatred. This return to and revival of the position 
of the first disciples of Jesus has had a powerful in- 
fluence on the thought of the Christian world and is - 
coming more and more to be shared by other spiritually 
minded people. In as far as the worid can be brought 
to the spiritual experience of the Friends, must war 
cease, because from the truly converted man the 
impulse to war and the spirit of it must disappear. 

In a third way Friends have powerfully promoted 
ideas of peace. In the minds of a large part of the 
world militarism and patriotism are inseparable. 
They think a man can not be a good and service- 
able citizen of a country, if he will not bear arms in 
its defense. Friends have done much to teach the 
possibility of a patriotism that is neither national 
clannishness on one hand nor militarism on the other. 
They have called attention to the fact that th 
Quaker virtues are the ultimate basis of good citi- 
zenshipy that no free government can exist unless 
it be founded on the conscientious rectitude, integrity, 
justice, and loyalty of its citizens; that the most 


130 


dangerous foe to a people, against which no armies 
can defend it, is its own viciousness; that the gov- 
ernment of a free people like the kingdom of God, is 
within men, rests ultimately on a moral and spiritual 
basis. To demonstrate’ by example the value to a’ 
country of an upright, unselfish citizenship, to make 
men ‘see that patriotism may exist without warfare, 
that the true interests of a country are best promoted 
by the pursuits of peace, and that moral and spiritual 
warfare waged against vice, ignorance and sin of men, 
whether at home or abroad, removes the causes that 
commonly lead men to carnal warfare — this is by no 
means the least service of Friends to the cause of 
peace. 
We turn from these to some more tangible and 
outward phases of the work of Friends for-peace and 
arbitration, some which are easier for the historian 
to seize upon, and which will more readily satisfy 
men who are clamorous for definite results. 

One naturally thinks first of William Penn and 
his “holy experiment” in civil government. Among 
the three Friends, Fox, Barclay and Penn, who gave 
impulse and shape to the Quaker movement, it was the 
latter’s task to shape its civil and political forms and 
ideals. Though he was the son of an English admiral, 
and himself destined for the army, when he became 
a Friend he learned to lean upon a higher power 
than that of the sword. Through the debt of Charles - 
Stuart to his father, Penn received his unique oppor- 
tunity to put into practical operation his ideal of a 
non-military state. This experiment was worked out 
in Pennsylvania. The circumstances were not aus- 
picious. The age was a warlike age. The colony 
was not wholly ‘made up of Quakers, whose convic- 
tions were opposed to war, and who knew the higher 
powers of the spiritual life. Men of warlike train- 


131 


ing and beliefs, attracted by the liberty of government 
and belief guaranteed in the new colony flocked to it. 
The Indians with whom Penn had first to deal, were 
neither civilized nor predisposed to treat kindly the 
white men who were intruding themselves on their 
lands. The stories of the cruel and exterminating 
wars which had been waged by the white men in 
New England and Virginia had made them suspicious 
and hostile. But Penn succeeded in winning their 
confidence, and made with them the only treaty “that 
was never sworn to and never broken.” Wars raged 
on either side of the colony, but as long as the 
Indians identified it with the Quakers it was at peace” 
with; them and they with it. Lord Baltimore, who 
had founded Maryland on the south, became engaged , 
in a dispute with the proprietor of Pennsylvania about 
the boundary. To uphold his own contention and 
tights he invaded Pennsylvania with an army. But 
he found no one to fight. Only peaceful hamlets and 
‘quietly grazing flocks met him, and unable to settle 
the matter in this way, he returned home. As part 
of his system of government, Penn established boards 
of arbitration in every county of his colony as a better 
way of settling differences between citizens of the 
commonwealth than by resort to the courses of law. 
Pennsylvania was a non-military government dur- 
ing the life of Penn and that of his sons. This condi- 
‘tion lasted some seventy years as a whole, until the 
growing pressure of the non-Quaker maitority and the 
excitement of the imminent French and Indian war, 
led the Quakers to refuse longer to serve in the as- 
sembly whose policy it could no longer approve. But 
the experiment lasted long enough to demonstrate 
certain truths that have had a lasting influence on the 
form of government and policy of this country. It 
demonstrated the practicibility of government that does 


132 


not rest on military force, even in dealing with savage 
‘tribes like the Indians. It demonstrated that an army 
for the defense of the territory and honor of a coun- 
try is not necessary. Lord Baltimore's invasion could 
do no harm“to a country that would not fight. It 
skewed the practical value of the principle of arbi- 
‘ration. Penn’s charters were the model upon which 
the constitution of the Commonwealth was made and | 
‘tt in turn powerfully influenced the Constitution of the 
United States. The fact that we have never been 
a military people, have been comparatively free from 
military policies and ambitions, have had no appreci- 
able standing army, have been slow to engage in the 
«juarrels of other nations, and have so largely used 
the method of arbitration to adjust our difficulties to 
«other countries — these facts are. due in part to the 
practical influence of Penn’s experiment in Penn- 
sylvania. 

Penn’s other great contribution. to the cause of 
peace is his “Plan for the Present Peace of Europe.” 
ne cannot say with certainty how much influence 
this plan of Penn’s has had on the thought of the 
world. Certainly the experience of Penn entitled him * 
to be heard on such a subject, but he produced it 
curing the time when he was under a cloud because 
his enemies had smirched his reputation and caused 
him to Icse, temporarily, the control of his province 
and to retire from public life. Yet it is known that 
three Friends, two of them Stephen Grellet and Wil- 
liam Allen, had frequent intercourse with Czar Alex- 
ander I of Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century and discussed with him the question of main- 
taining the peace of Europe. William Penn’s work 
must have shaped to a great extent the ideas which 
they presented to the emperor on the subject. This 
“is all the more significant when we remember that it 


“ 133 


was a grandson of Alexander’s brother who called the 
Congress which established the Hague Court. 

Penn’s plan, presented in his “Essay for the 
Present and Future Peace of Europe,” was briefly as 
follows. I quote from the address of Philip Garret 
before the American Friends’ Peace Conference: 

“The main feature of the essay was an imperial 
Diet or Parliament, which was to sit once in one, 
two or three years, before which sovereign assembly 
should be brought all differences depending between 
one sovereign and another that could not be made up 
by private embassies before the session began. 

The Diet was to represent the nations of Europe 
and he proceeds to particularize by naming the num- 
ber of representatives from each nation. There were 
only six from Engtand, while Germany was assigned 
12, France 10, Spzin to, Italy 8. * * * He goes 
on to say, “ And if the Turks and Muscovites are taken: 
in, as seems but fit and just, they will makeio apiece 
more.” “Sweedland” aad Poland were each to have 


_ four, altho the hali-barbarous Muscovites have swal- 


. 


lowed or partitioned the latter out of existence since. 

If any power would not submit to the award of 
this Diet, the other nations were to unite and compel 
submission. This sounds warlike, but Penn believed,. 
I suppose, that there would be little occasion for such 
use of force. 

Some meation should be made of the organized 
work of Friends both in propagating principles of 
peace and arbitration, and in influencing the polic 
of the government and in opposing legislation that 
would put the country on 2 military basis, or make 
military service compulsory. This has been consist- 
ently and generally done by the various Yearly Meet- 
ings and their subordinate meetings, largely througt 


| committees appointed and kept for the purpose. 


134 


Perhaps the most powerful single agency in this 
country in promoting sentiment in favor of peace and 
arbitration is the American Peace Society. It was to 
Friends that it has had to look for the capable man 
who has made it the force it has become. His states- 
manlike studies, papers and addreses on this question 
have certainly been among the most potent forces 
making for peace in this country in recent years. 

Not only have Friends as individuals stood before 
kings and presidents, petitioned parliaments, suffered 
in guardhouses or rotted in foul prisons and suffered 
the loss of all things as a testimony against war, but 
they have done patient, constructive, organized work 
for the cause of peace. 

However they have differed on other subjects, 
Friends have been disposed to abandon their tendency 
to separation and isolation in dealing with this ques- 
tion and to seek that power which comes from united 
effort. For a number of years the Peace Association of 
Friends in America has been doing most efficient work 
by the publication and dissemination of literature and 
the promotion of peace meetings and addresses to - 
arouse and educate the thought of the times. 

We should not pass this phase of the question 
without mentioning the work of the Lake Mohonk 
Conference on Peace and Arbitration, which tho made 
up mostly of men who are not Friends, yet owes its 
inception to a Friend and meets annually as the guest 
of Albert Smiley at Lake Mohonk, N. Y. 

We have found much to commend in the atti- 
tude and’ work of Friends on this very important - 
subject. May I not close by calling attention to two 
or three great needs, some striking wants of our work 
‘at this time? The Christian Endeavor Society an- 
nounced as part of its program a few years ago “war 
against war.’’ Compared with the other movements that . 


aon 


135 


it has launched, this one has gone pitiably lame, largely 


Because it lacked leaders and writers who had deep 
and honest convictions ou this subject. Most who 
have tried to write for this cause for them have felt 
called upon to spend time in defending war as right 
for Christians under some circumstances rather than 
to show how inconsistent it is with the spirit of Jesus. 
Friends ought to have the men who can command 
the respectful hearing of the Christian world who could 
embrace this opportunity to sive the C. E. the much- 
needed ammunition and drill for this war against war. 

Friends have also too generally abstained from 
taking active part in the political affairs of our coun- 
ay. We eta followed the example of the Penn- 
slvania assemblymen who abandoned Penn’s experi- 
ment rather than that of Penn himself, who dared to 
believe that there was a place ia the counsels of our 
nation fcr men believing in peace. It is not good peace 
policy to let the war men run the government. 

Lastly, our attitude and teaching on this subject 
has been too largely negative. We have seemed to 
deplore war, and given the impression that we would 
father see evil prevail than try to stop it by such means. 
We should make clear that our belief is that there 
is a more effective way to overcome evil than by 
military force, that we love righteousness, but that 
the choice is not simply between war and unrestrained 
riot of evil; but between moral and spiritual force on 
one hand and the bruie and brutalizing force of war 


- on the other. 


“AS THE SPIRIT MAY MOVE 


DR. W. H. VENABLE, CINCINNATI, OHIO. 


(Not Present.) 


“INFLUENCE OF QUAKERISM ON EDU- 
CATION. 


DR. R. G. BOONE, CINCINNATI, OHIO. 
(Not Present.) 


President Kelley was requested to read a short 
biographical sketch from the “Life of Stephen Grelett,” 
which bears closely upon local events here, being an 
account of his visit to this immediate vnc and to 
this Quarterly Meeting. 

President Robert L. Kelley, of Earlham College: 

“T am sure it is a disappointment that Dr. Boone 
is not here to discuss the subject of his paper. It is a 
question upon which we have all been thinking to a 
great extent, and one on which we are in perfect unity. 
Still I hate to say anything without special prepara- 
tion, though I feel it is a subject that should be empha- 
sized in his absence. What I shall say will be for the 
most part of a general nature. It would be impossible 
to enter into the details of the ‘Influence of Quakerism 
Upon Education’ in the United States. So far as it 
affects the state of Indiana, being reasonably well ac- 


137 


quainted with that part of the field, I might speak of 
the influence of the Monthly and Quarterly Meeting 
schools which Friends established everywhere. That 
influence has never been stated anywhere. I had hoped 
Dr. Boone would have spoken of it had he been here. 
It should be worked out. There is no doubt of the 
fact that Monthly Meeting and Quarterly Meeting 
schools, and others under the influence of Friends in 
these western states of ours, had a tremendous effect 
upon all this great Northwestern Territory as well as 
west of the Mississippi river. These were the fore- 
runners of our present common school system, and 
men who have any leaning towards Friends unite in 
giving to these schools and Friends the credit of estab- 
lishing the present basic principles of education long 
before the present public school system was on its feet. 
They got many of their methods and impulse to high 
ideals from these schools under the care of Friends. 
Some of the pioneer educators in Indiana were mem- 
bers of the Society of Friends, and prominent among 
them was Barnabas C. Hobbs. Joseph G. Cannon, who 
is to be the next speaker in the House of Representa- 
tives, is one of the many who are io occupy, or have 
occupied a prominent place in public work, who were 
educated by this man. He was one of the organizers of 
the Normal state schools and his influence is still felt. 
The Reform School for Boys in Indiana was estab- 
lished largely through the influence of Friends, and 
much more might be mentioned. 

“This point I am not discussing, but will leave 
with the thought that some who may follow me will 
speak more fully of it. It is but a secondary thought in 
connection with the work. 

“T said last night, and with all my energy, ‘I be- 
lieve in the principles of Quakerism in connection with 
my duties in educational work.’ One reason why I be- 


138 


lieve in the principles of Quakerism is because these 
forefathers in whose honor we are assembled to-day 
had such clear and practical insight into the nature of 
God and man’s relation to Him that they were enabled 
to carry out their educational ideals.” 

Wilson S. Doane, Indianapolis, Ind.: 

“T would call attention to the fact that Quakerism 
has stood for the freedom of the individual. For the 
idea of individualism, for the setting free of the in- 
dividual man to have for his Ruler that Divine Light 
which might be within him. One of the cardinal prin- 
ciples of Quakerism is the freedom of the, individual. 
It was upon this western continent that individualism 
was born. The world had not discovered its exist-. 
ence until it was revealed in this republic. This prin- 
ciple which has had such an important influence in the , 
field of education, as everywhere else, Friends have 
always insisted upon. That is not the end —it would 
be a serious mistake to stop there. It has gone to 
such an extent that it has caused separation, when we 
should have been bound in unanimity. You must free 
the individual, but you must always recognize that 
the individual has a duty to the society, to the state 
and to the community, and he must meet the demands 
of the society, the state and the community. 

“While Friends have always insisted upon the 
freedom of the individual and the maintaining of the 
individual man, there has always been an underlying 
recognition of the unity of society after all, of the 
unity of human brotherhood. The true aim of life is 
not merely selfish, but embraces our duty to our broth- 
ers.‘ Quakerism has stood for a two-fold idea, the in- 
dividual free, but at work in society to secure the best 
results. These two doctrines have always been held 
by Friends. We area unit on the point that individuals 
have a responsibility for the condition of the commun- 


139 


ity in which they live. This is the very high tide of 
education at the present_time—the quest of ideals. . 
We have had much to do with giving the world its 
ideals. One of-these is that ‘religion must go hand in 
hand with education.’ A most significant step is that 
religious culture must be a part and parcel of this 
republic of ours. Last winter in Chicago there was 
organized a ‘Religious Association’ of the educators 
of the country. These are two most important points 
and Friends have always stood for these. [I had felt 
that they should not be left out of this conference.” 
Dr. Haynes, of the Ohio State Universtiy: 

“T feel that your program acted is, ‘Try,’ “Experi- 
ment.” As has been so admirably told us, this is a 
subject which is very near to the heart of every one 
who has been brought up in Friendly circles m any 
degree whatsoever making you feel obliged to say a 
word if requested. 

“T was struck, however, by a note in Professor 
Walton’s remarks in the advice given to a young 
teacher, that sympathy would carry him through every- 
thing. It enables one to get right at the heart of the 
student. If we would ask curselves what Quakerism 
has had to do with education it seems to me we would 
find that the ideals animating educational circles to- 
day are the ideals Friends have held from the begin- 
ning. Friends have taught their young- people to en- 
deayor io do things from the earliest times. Friends 
have always tried to train up youthful citizens. Re- 
ligion is work through morals, through ethics. I am 
at present working to make better citizenship in the 
state of Ohio and I owe a great deal to my Quaker 
training and give you this cordial greeting from the 
Ohio State University.” 

Dr. Joseph S. Walton, of George School, Pa.: 
“This subject is so large and has been so well 


140 


presented, but there is one phase of it that might be 
emphasized. Every educator is acquainted with the 
philosophical principle of what teachers call ‘appercep- 
_ tion.” No knowledge is of worth except that which is 
assimilated, and which the individual mind can grasp. 
It is not worth while to know it because I told you — 
because your fathers knew it, etc. In seeing this, 
George Fox saw what educators of to-day are just 
beginning to discover. 

“Tt has been the custom to make the child embody 
the teacher’s or parent’s idea or conception of what it 
should be. Friends have departed from this way of 
making a man out of a boy, or a woman out of a girl. 
We believe we have no right to substitute our notion 
of what we should like the child to be, for the ideal 
to which God intended it should attain. George Fox 
was never insensitive to the fact that there is in the 
child the image of God, and it is the teacher’s and par- 
ent’s highest duty and noblest privilege to reveal to 
the child some vision of that image. When the child 
once catches a glimpse of that image, of that thing 
which he yearns to be, there can be no stronger in- 
centive to him or to her to try to attain to that ideal 
image. In dealing with a child, for misconduct 
Friends’ methed is different from that of any other 
people. The Friend in the home has been doing what 
the Friend in the school— with some exceptions — 
has not been doing until recently. In the school the 
Friend has not taught the child that the misconduct 
cannot be paid for by the penalty. Punishment can- 
not atone for the misdemeanor. The teacher says, “You 
do that, and I will do this.’ The boy says, ‘I will try 
and see if it is worth the teacher’s price.’ He tries it 
and finds it is worth more than the price. Quaker doc- 
trine stands out against putting a price upon the mis- 
demeanor. This principle of Quakerism is shown in 


141 


the conversation that took place between George Fox 
and William Penn in reference to the inconsistency 
of the latter wearing his sword, having embraced 
Quakerism. “Wear it as long as ‘thou canst,’ placed 
the responsibility of deciding the question where it 
belonged, and was entirely in harmony with the Quaker 
idea of individual development. The teacher who de- 
velops self-government in his school throws the child 
back, not on the price of the offense but upon his con- 
ception of what is right and wrong. 

“There are first three things that a child should 
know in order to properly govern himself. The child 
should be able to distinguish between right and wrong 
and do it himself. He should distinguish between 
truth and falsehood for himself and not some one for 
him. He should distinguish between the ugly and 
the beautiful and do it for himself. But Friends dis- 
counted this latter point. We all pride ourselves upon 
seeing the difference between what is ugly and what 
is beautiful. The child may not be able to see this at 
first, but we should not decide for him, but let him 
find it out himself with as little cost to himself as possi- 
ble. We should re-incorporate into the system of 
schools that are democratic this idea of self-govern- 
ment. The parent and teacher can place the child in 
a position where he can govern himself. How often 
they have gone out from ‘guarded’ schools and at the 
age of 21 years have gone forth to battle with that 
which they have never confronted before. 

“Tn religious matters we say to the child, ‘govern 
thyself, control thyself.’ Quakerism has brought the 
same principle into education in our secular schools. 
Too many schools are military centers without the 
uniforms, etc., where wrongdoing in any direction 
means so much penalty. This is not Quaker doc- 
trine.” 


— SEVENTH DAY, 1:30 P. M—— 


Seth H. Ellis: 

“T will open this ein by calling attention to 
this little iron pot, the property of Mary Ann Brown 
Mather. It belonged to her great-great-grandmother, 
Esther Rogers. It is supposed to have been used by 
her between 1780 and 1800 in coming over the moun- 
tains, when they came here. They camped out, and 
cooked their potatoes in this pot. It is in good repair. 

“As the dining room is still filled and some yet 
waiting for their dinner we will not proceed with the 
program for a while.” 

Martha McKay, Indianapolis, Ind. : 

“T have the impression that young persons can- 
not understand what sacrifices have been made in the 
old time. There were eighteen hundred acres of land 
in this vicinity owned by our grandfather, who 
jeopardized his farm to assist in freeing the slaves. 
The protest of the Welshes caused them to lose all. 
For the first crop of corn he received nothing, as it 
could not be disposed of except to go to the distillery, 
and so my Grandfather Welsh said, ‘Let ad lie there 
and rot on the ground.’ 

“My grandfather and grandmother came to 
Caesar’s Creek. The day after they landed they let 
everything go to come to this house to sit an hour, for 
it was ‘meeting day.’ 

“My erandfather would cut down the trees and 
raise a little rye in order that the children might have 


143 


a little rye bread instead of corn bread. Grandfather 
and grandmother winnowed the grain. 

“The Welches and Wales have not been men- 
tioned, but they lost much by the mustering officers, 
who took it all. An effort was made by them towards 
the introduction of good sheep into this country, but 
the officers carried them all away. I am thankful to 
be here where our forefathers lived, grateful for my 
birth-right in the Society of Friends. My mother is 
~ 98 years of age and her sister, Nancy Butterworth, is 
present at these meetings at the age of 93. My father 
lived to be 98. This centennial has caused many happy 
memories to be recalled, 

“Much of the traveling was done on horseback 
in those days and Uncle Thomas Butterworth was 
telling me about Nancy Butterworth and his pleasure 
at being permitted to assist her to mount her horse at 
the ‘Upping Block,’ as it was called.” 


THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE OF QUA- 
KERISM. THE IN-DWELLING AND IN- 
SPEAKING SPIRIT, GRaGOm: 


DR. JOS. S. WALTON, PRES. OF GEORGE SCHOOL, PENNA. 


My friends, the latest conclusion that comes to us 
from the student of the most modern and approved 
psychological study of man, is in a degree confirmation 
of the same truth expressed by George Fox and his 
people some centuries ago. 

The student of the human mind to-day, has in a 
surprising and interesting manner reached the conclu- 
sion that the human mind, (those psychological activ- 
ities that make up the human mind,—those qualities 
and gifts that we use in this life as instruments and 
lay down when. we are through with the responsibility 
of this life——) are of themselves insufficient to satisfy 
the longings of the human soul. I use that latter term 
with the psychologist’s meaning. Years ago. George 
Fox well understood and taught the same doctrine. 

That part of us — that finite part — finds in itself 
a lack of something which will satisfy its most earnest 
longing. Neither can we find, in what men call cul- 
ture, satisfaction for that which is constantly longing 
to be satisfied. 

Fox and his people said this thirst of the soul can 
be satisfied only by communion with the Spirit. Jesus 
of Nazareth said the same thing. 


, 145 


Long before the time of Jesus, way down among 
the disciples of Confucius, it was said it could only be 
accomplished by developing the man and bringing him 
to the highest state of perfection and culture. The. 
policy of Confucius, entered upon long generations ago 
was faithfully tried, and it has given us the Chinese 
people who worship their ancestors. 

Judging their principles from the results they at- 
tained we know they have failed to satisfy. 

Brahmanism went to the other extreme. It said, 
“ Instead of exalting the individual and ignoring God, 
we will exalt Brahma and ignore the individual.” 
Struggling through long centuries with this effort to 
satisfy this something, they gave us Hindu Philosophy, 
and the high culture wherein it is taught that God by 
meditation made the world. 

While they discovered much that was good and 
true, they failed to do what many of us, too, have 
failed in. Since the days of Jewish history, since the 
days of Christianity, what failures there have been to 
‘satisfy this longing! ; 

There is in every human being the image of God, 
and the soul, foliowing its more or less clear visions 
‘of that image, yearns to become like unto it. During 
all ages and in all climes, religion has been the chief 
business of man. The struggle to satisiy that un- 
filled want ‘has taken precedence to all other things. 
It is true men have at times been inclined to confuse 
the means for the end, but the underlying purpose 
has been to satisfy that hunger in human nature, which 
cannot be appeased with what the senses bring into 
its experience. 

Again and again have they turned into the dark 
avenues of hate, avarice, jealousy and ambition, and 
steeped their fair heritage in the blood of their 
brother ; and, as often have they turned away unsatis- 


146 


fied to worship again at the shrine of the eternal. 
Again and again have they turned into the alluring 
paths of self-gratification and sensual pleasure; and, as 
often have they turned away, unsatisfied, to worship 
again at the shrine of the eternal. 

Men have tried to bury themselves in business; 
tried to satisfy themselves with wealth, and have be- 
come engulfed in the channels of fortune-getting, only 
to again turn back and once more worship at the shrine 
of the Holy of Holies. 

And often, as he turns away to satisfy this long- 
ing in the gratification of his own pleasure, in what 
some people call the perfection of culture, he still feels 
that something in his nature has never yet been satis- 
fied. 

Jesus of Nazareth saw this so clearly and spoke 
of it to his disciples when he told them “ of the king- 
dom to which he came to bear witness.”” How far they 
were from wndcrstanding—these disciples whom he 
had chosen ! They did not choose him. How little did 
they understand what he meant by that kingdom. 
They felt in their hearts that he was “in touch” with 
something that they, too, would gladly be in touch 
with. 

Just a few months ago, one glorious evening in the 
mountains of Pennsylvania, a teacher, an artist, and a: 
college student sat on the top of one of their magnifi- - 
cent mountains to watch the light of day go out. 

The artist and the teacher were transported with 
the influence of the beauty of the day that faded out in 
the glory of its fullness; 

As the three went down from there into the dark- 
ness, the student, (feeling that he had missed some- 
thing which the other two had observed), came up and 
laid his hand on the teacher, and said: 

“Tell me what you men saw in the beauty and 


147 


glory of the sunset that I did not see.” In his heart 
was the thought,—* If you got something out of that 
sunset that I did not get, tell we where I may find it, 
where I may go that I may buy it.” Poor young stu- 
dent! Like the young man who came to Jesus saying, 
“What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” With the 
Master’s answer you are all familiar. He came—a 
rich young ruler—thinking to buy the unpurchasable,, 
what men have struggled to buy and cannot buy. If 
it could be bought out of his wealth and influence, he 
had an abundance and was willing to pay. If it could 
be bartered for with his good name and good character 
and his success in keeping the moral law, he had of that 
‘and was willing to pay. 

In his answer to the young man, Jesus did not 
reprove him as one he disliked, but as one whom he 
loved. He told him he had gotten a moral estimate of 
values which was altogether wrong. He must change 
his base of value for the thing he was after could not 
be bought. And then he said to his companions, “ How 
hard it is for the rich man to satisfy this longing of 
his soul.” 

The young man went away sorrowiul because 
Jesus swept away his code of values, destroying his 
price list, in telling him to substitute heavenly treasure 
for earthly treasure. “ How hard is it for them that 
trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God.” The 
disciples were astonished, whereupon Jesus, with his: 
characteristic power of illustration said: “It were 
easier fora camel to go through the eve of a needle 
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 

With this utterance, we are told, the disciples were 
astonished beyond measure, szying among themselves, 
Who then can be saved? 

Jesus, looking upon them saith, ‘“ With men it is: 
impossible but not with God: for with. God all things: 


148 


are possible.” It was hard then, as it has been ever 
since, for men to see in this the fundamental principles 
of Christianity. 

Scholars have tried to explain this saying, and 
much effort has been expended to show that camel 
should be translated cable, therefore the meaning of 
Jesus was that it was hard to put a cable through the 
eye of a needle. Others again have tried to show that 
the “eye of a needle” was “the low and narrow gate of 
the usual oriental city of those times, and the camel 
could enter only with great difficulty, by kneeling and 
dispensing with some of its burden, etc. 

Possibly he only wished to show the impossibility 
of buying it.. We would infer from the reading that. 
he meant to tell the rich young ruler, that his request 
was wholly impossible. Just as impossible as it would 
be for the camel to go through the eye of a needle. 
That with riches and human estimates of moral worth 
it was impossible to buy the wherewithal that would 
satisfy this yearning of the soul to experience the In- 
ward Presence, and to incorporate into the natural 
body some of the spiritual body. 

Man had not the purchasing medium. With man, 

‘a knowledge of the teachings of the spirit was im- 
possible, With man, eternal life could not be bought. 
With God, on the other hand, it was possible; but it 
must come some other way. 

“The kingdom of God is not meat and drink: but 
rightcousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” 

‘My kingdom is righteousness and peace and 
joy “—and some of us have stopped there, but he did 
not. Paul interpreted it rightly when he said “in the 
Holy Ghost,” in the spirit of righteousness, in the 
spirit of peace, in the spirit of joy. This lesson which 
Paul had learned so well was but vaguely compre- — 
hended by the disciples of Jesus at the time he contem- 


149 


plated his departure. “It must needs be that I go 
away, and I pray the Father, and He shall give 
you another comforter, that He may abide with you 
forever. * * * The Comforter, which is the Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he 
shall teach you all things.” 

They still sought to satisfy the highest longings 
of the human soul with the teachings of men. They 
had found a “ Master,” whom they could touch and 
see and listen to. If he went away how could the 
Comforter come? What was the Holy Ghost? What 
was the Spirit of God? Vital questions that have been 
asked many times since the day of Thomas and his 
plentitude of doubts. 

This Inward Presence, this Spirit of God, this 
glow of enlightenment, this In-dwelling Power! What 
peace and joy and satisfaction resulted from the ex- 
perience! 

This is the thought that the Society of Friends has 
struggled with so long. The “ Kingdom” that they 
know; the “experience of experiences” that they 
know; the ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost ” that they know,—all are within them, 

Friends have not used that word, “ Holy Ghost,” 
so much as the Colonists have, but the operation of 
the Holy Spirit is the same, only in other terms, right- 
eousness and peace and joy in this indweiling presence. 

As men spoke of these things, those who had not 
known the experience naturally longed for it. What 
may we do to receive more life? How may we be 
saved from the influences that kill and inherit the in- 
fluences that britig eternal life? This became, as it 
ever had been, the burning question. 

Doubting the history of this movement, in all ages 
men have struggled to get around it, and to get where 
they could buy this thing. They have worked out the 


150 


doctrine of merit. - By obedience to the ordinances of 
the church, they could buy satisfaction for this long- 
ing of human nature. The church had said, “ You can 
buy that with your money. A man can cover a multi- 
tude of sins if he pay money to the church.” 

The Christian Church, after centuries of develop- 
ment, said this pearl of great price could be bought; 
by good works; by a life of obedience; by strict ob- 
servance of the ordinances of the church. The doc- 
trine of merit was unfolded in great fullness. As the 
doctrine deteriorated, access to the Divine Presence, 
and deliverance from the burden of sin, received a 
money value, until Martin Luther was raised up and 
strengthened by this same in-dwelling spirit, to enter 
his protest and proclaim that to be brought into com- 
munion with the Spirit of God is a free gift. Salvation 
is the gift of God. We are saved by grace. It is free 
to all men. It is possible with God, impossible with 
man. Luther’s protest was to chahige the basis of 
values, and to remove from man the idea that.by the 
accumulation of his own estimated worth he could 
‘buy from God the jewel of eternal life. 

Later, the future came to be regarded as of more 
value than the present. Luther lived to see the reac- 
tion against his own doctrine. Men reasoned that if 
their good deeds had no purchasing value, that if obe- 
dience to the ordinances of the church could not win 
for them the kingdom of heaven,—that if with their 
characters and good names they could not barter for 
life eternal, what was the necessity of keeping the law? 

Why was it longer necessary to keep in the nar- 
row path cf rectitude, if the death of Jesus was. a ran- 
som for the soul? Come, let us eat, drink, and be 
merry. 

No one denounced this movement more vehe- 
mently than Luther himself. Men struggled to get 


151 


away from the penalties that were crowding them, 
that they had been taught to look for. 

So the cry went up as before, what shall I do to 
be saved? The church said, “ By the payment of so 
much.” 

“By thy good works,” the church Sok “thou 
shalt be saved.” 

The reaction against Luther’s doceriie of free 

-gtace forced the ecclesiasticism of that day to rigid 
extremes in order to off-set the tendency toward im- 
moral living. The theology that grew up in the wake 
of- Luther’s career placed great stress on the letter: 
men could not be trusted to place their own construc- 
tion and interpretation upon the operations of the 
Spirit. This narrow and contracting attitude of the 
different churches aroused among intelligent people, 
especially, another reaction known even to this day as 
Rationalism. This was a movement against scholastic 
Lutheranism. 

Rationalism declared for the supremacy of the 
Human Reason, The engine could get up steam with- 
Out a fireman, and could run the track without a hand 
at the throttle valve. The ocean-liner could carry its 
load of freight without any other hand on the helm 
than that of its own nature. The mother could per- 
form the highest functions of mother love, could fol- 
low the track of duty, could read the chart and mark 
the pointings of that trembling little needle with no 
other aid than the faculties and activities described by 
the psychologist. 

Rationalism raises human reason above scripture 
and tradition, and accepts them only as far as they 
come within the limits of its comprehension. 

Evangelical Protestantism, on the other hand, 
makes the scripture alone the supreme rule, but uses 
tradition and reason as means in ascertaining its true 


152 


sense. The Roman Catholic Church made scripture 
and tradition the supreme rule of faith, laying the chief 
stress on tradition, that is the teaching of an Infallible 
church headed by an infallible Pope, as the judge of 
the meaning of both. 


- From this it can be seen why it has been said that 
the Reformation was the first step in the emancipa- 
tion of Reason. The Rationalist goes further and says 
the second step is emancipation from the tyranny of 
the Bible. Against this tendency of Rationalism, Lu- 
ther hurled the whole weight of his ardent nature. He 
could not go back to the mother church and place in- 
fallibility in the hands of’ ordinance interpreted by the 
Pope and the traditions of the Church. He could not 
go with the rationalist and place human reason above 
the Bible. What did he do? He turned to his central 
doctrine of justification by faith and made it the cri- 
terion. In this he placed the material or subjective 
principle of Protestantism above the formal or objec- 
tive principle, and in doing this he strangely enough 
anticipated George Fox, in placing the truth above 
the witness of the truth, the doctrine of the Gospel 
above the written Gospel, Christ above the Bible. He 
did this with full knowledge of the fact that he first 
learned Christ from the Bible, and especially from the 
Epistles of Paul which gave him the key to his scheme 
of salvation. . 

All of the Northern part of Europe was shaken 
with the struggle between Lutheranism and German 
Rationalism when John Calvin arose. He was the best 
Theologian among the Reformers. He declined to 
abuse the human reason as Luther had done. He gave 
it the high office of being the hand-maid of revelation. 
Calvin denied to the Church the right to make an arti- 
cle of faith or to decide the canonicity of the Scrip- 
tures. Consequently he placed the canon on the au- 


153 


thority of God who bears testimony to it through the 
voice of the Spirit in the hearts of the believers. ‘* The 
eternal and individual truth of God,” he says, “is 
not founded on the pleasure and judgment of men, and 
can. be as easily distinguished as light from darkness, 
and white from black.” 

Here again we find George Fox and his people 
anticipated in a surprising manner. Fox in his Jour- 
nal (Vol. 1, p. 90. Isaac T. Hopper Ed. 1831), says, ° 
“T was to direct people to the Spirit that gave forth 
The Scriptures, by which they might be led into all 
truth, and so up to Christ and ous as those had been 
who gave them forth.” 

The resemblance is found more marked in Robert 
Barclay, who says, (Apology, 6th Ed. 17236, p. 72.) 
“But the Scripture authority and certainty depend 
upon the Spirit, by which they were dictated: And the 
reason why they were received as truth, is, Because 
they proceeded from the Spirit.” 

It is not the purpose of this discussion to touch 
more than that part of Calvinism that concerns the 
rise of Quakerism. It was under the reaction against 
Calvinism that the Society of Friends appeared. The 
entire movement against scholastic Calvinism has been 
called Arminianism. It was a theological contest with 
the seat of war in Holland. Calvinism emphasizes 
Divine Sovereignty and Free-grace. Arminianism 
emphasizes human responsibility. The one restricts 
the Saving Grace to the elect; the other extends it to 
all men on the condition cf. Faith. Both are right in 
what they assert; both are wrong in what they deny. 

Arminianism spread from its native home into the 
greater part of Northern Europe. The Arminians 
were pioneers in the critical study of the Bible, and of 
the early history of the church. They opposed strict 
doctrinal tests, and naturally advocated toleration. 


154 


Arminianism spread through England during the Car- 
oline Period and became the prevalent faith in the 
English Episcopal Church, and later its scholarly but 
tepid spirit leavened the English theology of the eight- 
eenth century. In the Methodist revival, Arminian- 
jsm acquired a peculiar life and fervency which it had 
not known in its native haunts or after it was trans- 
planted to Great Britain. 

Ouakerism appeared at the time that Arminianism 
was being transplanted to English soil. At a time 
when Holland and Britain were aglow with the strug- 
gle between scholastic Calvinism and aggressive Ar- 
minianism. At a time when the faithful followers of 
Menno, with their peace-loving instincts were offering 
an asylum for the spirit-weary souls of Northern 
Europe. , 

While interestingly similar to the Mennonites on 
the one hand, and singularly allied to Mysticism on 
the other, Quakerism was different from either. While 
there was much in Arminianism it could have owned, 
Quakerism was a distinct organism of itself, allied to, 
but different from any of these movements. It was a 
distinct off-shoot from the Reformation, and in some 
respects closely allied to Luther’s effort to replant 
primitive Christianity- ; 

Like Luther, Fox placed the truth above the wit- 
ness of truth; the doctrine of the Gospel above. the 
written Gospel; Christ above the Bible. ; 

Fox did this in the attitude of spirit described by 
William Penn when he saw in the early reformers 
kindred spirits. 

“They owned the spirit,” he writes, “ they owned 
the Inspiration and Revelation, indeed, and grounded 
their separation and reformation upon the sense and 
understanding they received from it, in the reading of 
the Holy Scriptures of truth: And this was their plea, 


155 


the scripture is the text, the Spirit the interpreter, and 
that to every man for himself.” 

This brings us to the fundamental doctrine of 
Quakerism, where to place the infallibility. Fox 

agreed with Luther in denying this right to the or- 
dinances of the church, denying it to the traditions of 
the church. Fox agreed with the early reformers in 
making the Scriptures the text, and the Spirit of God 
the Holy Ghost, the In-dwelling Presence, the interpre- 
ter of the text. 

All the reformers that followed Luther denied that 
“the Roman Church, indeed that any church, had a 
tight to impose upon the conscience articles of faith 
without a clear warant in the word of God.” 

Fox went further and insisted that the Church had 
no right to impose upon the conscience its interpreta- 
tion of what is found in the Bible. Only as we are in 
the same spirit as the men who wrote the Bible, only 
as this In-dwelling Presence, this Spirit of God shines 
in the conscience:like a light, is the truth made mani- 
fest, and no church ordinances made by men, no man- 
made interpretation of the Bible shall take precedence 
to the truth revealed by this witness of the truth in 
the soul. In this Fox disagreed with the followers of 
Luther, while he agreed with the great reformer him- 
self. 

Indeed the fundamental principle of Quakerism 

«hinges on the doctrine of the In-dwelling Presence. 
This brings the faith of Friends into close resemblance 
to Mysticism, and yet while the relation is close the 
difference is marked. Mysticism runs like a thread 
through all Christendom, a golden thread that may be 
the very. warp of all that Jesus taught. Mysticism 
exalis feeling above knowledge. It is a phase of re- 
ligious life in which reliance is placed upon spiritual 
illumination, believed to transcend the ordinary powers 


156 

of the understanding. An endeavor of the hum 
mind to grasp the Divine essence, or ultimate reality 
of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual com- 
munication with the highest. A form of religious be- 
lief that is founded upon spiritual experiences, not dis- 
criminated or tested and systematized in thought. 
Mysticism carried to its logical result resembles Hin- 
duism. Meditation takes precedence to volition. 
Brahma by meditation created all things. Mysticism 
undermines the human will and destroys its capacity 
for Christ-like activities. Mysticism is an essential 
part of the religious life, but it is only a part and 
not all. 

The Mystic believes that the part is greaterthanthe 
whole. Mysticism deforms the religious man, leaving . 
no room on which to build a church. Madame Guyon 
was a mystic and a Catholic, and the very ritual that 
the early Friends would have despised, enabled her to 
grow asa Mystic. Jacob Behmen was a Mystic and a 
Protestant philosopher. He hurled aside the ritual 
that was life to Madame Guyon, and Philosophy be- 
came the slag that held the pure gold of Mysticism. 

Jacob Behmen saw Nature rise out of God, and 
men sink into God. To him God was the substantia, 
the underlying ground of all things. To him the trans- 
ition of God’s spirit to man, of light to our souls, 
comes as an act of will, as an act of love, as an act of 
adoration and worship. 

The followers of Behmen, the Behmenites, formed 
societies and held in common with the Friends, that 
salvation is nothing short of the very presence and life 
of Christ in the believer. They refused to partake of 
any religious doctrine except the pure ministrations of 
the Spirit. The will and the power of acting, the in- 
tellect and the power of thinking were swallowed up 
in the emotions and the power of feeling. 


157 


They rejected from their religious Bill of Fare 
any coarse food or waste, but insisted on the concen- 
Arated ministration of the Spirit only, forgetting that 
human nature, in order to assimilate the best, must 
partake of that which some would call useless. The 
dairyman feeds waste in bulk to enable his herd to 
assimilate the vital foods and secure the full value of a 
balanced ration. 

Fox and his people embodied much, if not-all that 
was valuable in Mysticism, and at the same time they 
evolved a system of Church government as unique as 
it was simple. 

For them, yielding to the guidance of the Spirit 
meant a life of religious activity, a life of philanthropic 
activity. For them the operations of the Light meant 
an intellectual awakening. Thinking, and feeling, and 
acting came in their psychological order with the early 
Friends. An enlarged wisdom shone out through their 
intellectual natures. Mysticism glowed through their 
emotional life, and a rare philanthropic and ‘mission 
spirit radiated from their volitional activities. Quaker- 
ism, in its primitive purity, appropriated the whole man 
and all his activities, and to this day those who plant 
themselves upon its primal and fundamental doctrine, 
find that their whole nature is called into service. 

Fox, Penn and Barclay out of their years of early 
manhood, out of those years of activity in which the 
fires of youth had not yet burned away, preached and 
wrote the doctrine of the Inner Light. In later years 
they and their followers laid more stress upon the 
In-speaking Voice, and still later the In-dwelling Pres- 
ence received more attention from the Ministry. 

Fox, Penn and Barclay used the word Light to 
describe a condition rather than a cause. To them 
the Inner Light was not necessarily confined to the 
seeing of visions, and predicting the future. Indeed 


158 


this was the most insignificant part of it. The Inner 
Light stood for a decided intellectual illumination. 
These early Friends anticipated Froebel and the entire 
Herbartian doctrine of Apperception. They said that 
there was no knowledge of worth except that appro- 
priated by the individual mind. That is, the student 
may see the demonstration of a problem in Geometry, 
he may even perform the demonstration to the satis- 
faction of his instrtictor and the enlightenment of his 
classmates, and yet some time later, even weeks or 
years later, the truth of that demonstration dawns upon 
his mind like a light. He now sees it in a way that no 
demonstration could reveal to him. 

The primitive Friend declared that the act of 
knowledge was not complete until after the moment of 
illumination. 

The trend of their minds, and the influences of the 
times carried this standard into the activities of re-_ 
ligious life far more than in any other, and subjected 
their followers to the danger of placing.a low value on 
knowledge secured in any other way. Some of them 
have even gone so far as to call in question the utility 
of the demonstration. Wait until it became self-evi- 
dent. 

The Light shining in the conscience manifested 
all sin. It educated the conscience until it grew in 
power to distinguish right from-wrong. Until the 
wrongs of humanity so weighed upon the discerning 
spirit that he could not rest satisfied in sweeping his 
own. door step, in keeping himself aloof from the 
world. The-Light led him out into the world to do the 
Christ work as made manifest to his individual soul. 
This work instead of leading into diversities of direc- 
tions and interests, instead of being dissipated in 
wasteful and diverging channels, contained a maryel- 
ous unity, as all work of the Spirit does. He who 


159 


knows the Presence of the Light and does the work 
that it makes manifest, realizes the truth of that re- 
mark of Jesus, “I am the Vine and. ye are the 
branches.” On the rock of this unity the early Friend 
built his church. 

Martin Luther said: This thing man wants is 
the gift of God. It is grace. 

Whatever that doctrine came to mean to his fol- 
lowers, this is what Luther said. : 

It is grace, that, by and through the teaching of 
the Holy Spirit, gives satisfaction to the highest long- 
ings of the human soul. 

This will show the very close agreement between 
Martin Luther himself and George Fox. You do not 
see the same agreement between George Fox’s follow- 
ers and Martin Luther’s followers. This part of it is 
very significant, since Luther knew the doctrine that 
we are saved by grace; that it is a free gift given 
by God to His children and not purchasable, any more 
than a mother’s love is purchasable. The child does 
not buy its mother’s love. The mother gives her love 
even to the wayward boy. 

_ The people were intoxicated with the new doctrine 
of “freedom by Grace.” But when people hear it, how 
hard for them to put in into practice. The power to 
buy remission of sins had been swept away, Luther’s 
followers were forced to follow ordinances in the 
church. The people were not able to understand what 
was meant by religious freedom. Even to this day, 
people in a Democracy can scarcely understand that 
religious liberty is not license. They did not know that 
the noblest form of liberty is the subjection of self in 
serving others. 

How very few have the grace to understand the 
fact that the locomotive engine that swings the moun- 
tain curves as its wild scream echoes from cliff to ciiff, 


160 


is free as a locomotive, only when it is on the track,. 
only when its great heart throbs with the pulse of the 
steam, Only when the hand of something other than 
itself is on the throttle valve and controls that mighty 
power. Without steam; without the track; without 
the engineer, it is a helpless monster. 

How few realize that the Ocean Grey Hound that 
rocks on the billows of the deep, is free only when the 
burden of its freight holds it down; when the needle 
trembles in the compass; and when a hand other than 
itself, rests on the helm. Without the cargo; without 
the compass; without the pilot, the vessel would be- 
come the victim of wind and tide, to be tossed ashore 
a helpless wreck. 

‘Freedom means to the mother heart that is so 
full of love for her own, that she is free only, (and she 
knows it,) only when she has the opportunity to mani- 
fest it to those she loves. If any force of circum- 
stances take that opportunity from her, she feels that 
she has lost this liberty. If her erring boy comes back, 
her hand is the first to minister unto him. This was 
net well understood in that day and not very Well in 
this democracy to-day. It was not understood by the 
men who followed Martin Luther and tried to interpret 
his teachings. When Martin Luther said: “Truth is 
greater than the enunciation of truth; and whatever 
is meant by the Gospel, is greater than the written gos- 
pel, he knew it from this Inward Presence, this ever- - 
shining Light, with this close touch of spirit with 
spirit, that came when men realized that the Spirit of 
God was living in them. 

For the want of a better word they spoke of that 
experience as the “ Light.” Fox spoke of it as the 
‘enlightenment of the human understanding.” 

A geometric explanation makes us know the truth 
concerning the fact demonstrated. The truth of the 


161 


proposition flashes upon us like a light. The truth of 
such mathematical demonstration is self-evident. It 
is not necessary to go into a long reasoning with a 
mother to show her that she loves that boy who has 
gone astray. She knows it, and it is a self-evident fact 
which permeates her whole nature. 

bur there is something even deeper than this, that 
does not admit in any degree the necessity of demon- 
stration, a matter so vital, that no heart can rest satis- 
fied until it has itself known the experience. 

This inward longing is not satisfied until we know 
this inshining Light, shining like a light ix the con- 
science. You never find one who has experienced it 
contusing this light with the conscience. 

The true Friend sees in the Inner-Light some- 
thing more than an occasional gleam or flash of illu- 
mination. He finds in it something more than an occa- 
sional disturbance of his material and finite quietude, 
something more than a conversicnal disturbance that 
occurs Once or twice in a life time. To him the Inner 
Light betokens the In-dwelling Presence, is the at- 
tendant to the In-speaking Voice. To him the Inner 
Light results rom an inner condition, in which the 
spiritual man is nourished at the expense of the nat- 
ural man. He sees with Paul, the resurrection of the 
spirit, “It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. 
It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. 
There.is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” 

Brahmanism recognizes the spiritual body, but in- 
sists that its periection is based on the destruction of 
the natural body. Quakerism embodies the Christian 
conception that it is sown a natural body and raised a 
spiritual body ; that there is a natural body and a spirit- 
ual body; that this indwelling Presence with the Light 
resulting therefrom gathers from the natural sowing 
a spiritual harvest. 


162 


For the Friend, conscience is a finite factor that 
improves in the presence of the Spirit. 

Spread a handful of iron filings on a sheet of 
paper and move a magnet beneath, Each individual 


iron filing is aware of an inward presence. A new ac- 
tivity enters into its being. With the passing of the 
magnet it raises and lowers. It struggles to be free 
from the dust and grease that environs it. Each filing 
seems to be cognizant of its neighbor and they all form. 
into beautiful circles and curves in which the individ- 
uals can raise and lower themselves without incon- 
veniencing others. A unity enters into the new life. 
Bits of tin and material not embodying the true metal 
refuse to respond. They deny the. presence of the 
magnet. They become a stumbling block in the way | 
of others. Conscience in the iron filing is capacity to 
partake of the presence of the magnet, a presence 
which when received can be given again, without being. - 
the Icser. 

He who receives the In-dwelling Spirit, has heard 
His voice, and seen His light, receives something which 
he can give and not be the loser. He has found some- 
thing that satisfies the highest longings of his nature. 
He recognizes in the In-dwelling Spirit, man’s oppor- 
tunity to commune with somewhat more than him- 
self, somewhat more than friends can bring to him. 
He has found something greater than the most gifted 
sermon or the mest inspired writing, yet—(and here 
is the apparent paradox,) the thing he has found is 
strangely dependent upon the something friendship 
can give him, the something that the inspired writing 
can give him. The more he knows of the In-dwelling 
Presence the more he appreciates the fellowship of 
friends, the uplift of inspiration from others. The 
more necessary. does he find it to meet with others for ~ 


163 


social worship, and the Bible becomes to him the Book 
of all books. 

What a dangerous path these fathers of ours 
trod! The fathers of this church escaped being swal- 
lowed in the many chasms that yawned on every side. 
They never turned Quakerism down to take up Mysti-: 
cism which is so alluring. 

Mysticism exalts spirit above letter, but contains 
nothing within itself upon which we can build a 
church. It only asks for the heart and the emotions 
and nothing more. Rid of its* logical conclusions it 
takes us back to Brahmanism. It is alluring, but it 
is death to the church. Our early fathers knew it 
better than we know it. They gave us Quakerism that 
need not die. It has all that is in Mysticism that is 
worth having. 
~ Quakerism developes individual character, the 
operations of the spirit in each individual, so that he 
can do that which no other man can do in that special 
field, and differentiates him from every other man. 

Ii I train this hand in some special line of handi- 
work, there comes a delicacy in the fingers that is sim- 
ply marvelous. One finger can be developed beyond 
the rest. Different children in the same family can 
be differently developed and yet retain a common in- 
terest, just as those fingers develop a marvelous skill 
as separate factors and yet are tied together in wity. 

The children of one father have been pushed 
off into many kinds of work, yet is there any reason 
why they should not live together in unity? 

A Friends’ meeting gathered in a business capac- 
ity, is strong in individuals, but when al! are bound by 
the spirit which makes for unity, the resuit is the most 
beautiful inion in the world. 


164 


In the ministry it is the same. ‘All guided by the 
spirit of truth and righteousness and making for a 
beautiful unity. All that is of self, kept in subjection 
to the great Overruling Spirit of Love. 

‘Right here in the very centre of this activity we 
see in this centennial occasion, we are thankfully and 


gratefully bowing before the Father’s hand and work- 
ing together in unity. No part can separate itself 
and work with efficacy. Quakerism must give to the 
world a practical lesson in universal brotherhood. 
Men have tried to act alone. He can go so far, and 
then he must stop, for the spirit of God dwelling in 
him pushes him into some avenue of labor. Peter, in 
his boat by the shore, was “‘called” because Jesus saw 
in him more than we would have seen. 


John Woolman was “called.” He knew and 
loved the liberty which is opportunity to follow 
the track of duty; to help carry the burdens of life; 
to feel the presence and follow the pointings of a 
Guide wkose voice cannot be mistaken or misunder- 
stood. 

The Spirit dwelling in man is the very element of 
Quakerism. Ii it is worth anything, it requires that he 
meet his brother, and as he takes his hand and sees,— 
(not what the neighbors say of him,)—but the un- 
fulfilled, the possibilities that lie in him, the image 
of God not yet developed, that he labor henceforth 
to bring forth that image.in its perfection. 

Such a man saw the unfulfilled in John B. Gough, 
and by the Grace of God aided him to accomplish, de- 
spite his many weaknesses, a mission in life which few 
other men have performed. 

This In-dwelling Spirit when it takes possession 
ef the individual, qualifies him for some special work. 


F 


165 


It is not to prove that one doctrine is worth more than 
another, not to show that one experience is worth 
more than another that Quakerism exists. ‘It pleads 
to-day for this individual work which comes from this 
In-dwelling Presence that dwells in the individual 
human heart. It is a process that is miraculous, 


Go with me into the cornfields in Ohio, ready to 
harvest. Go just a few weeks before the corn is ready 
to cut, and see the same miracle I would like to show 
you ina man. Notice the stalk and the slender threads 
of green silk, and on the top of the stalk, myriads of 
grains of pollen. 


If one little grain of pollen is deposited on that 
thread of silk, a grain of corn is made. What God 
puts into that tassel of corn, is many times too many 
grains of pollen. He also puts into the human heart a 
great abundance of that love which draws men’s hearts 
to Him. 


Does a mother say, “I have loved this wayward 
boy for nineteen years and he has not repaid me im 
any way, I will love him no longer? I have expended 
more than God ever intended L should spend and I will 
stop?” 

Oh! the riches of God’s mercy to us, when he 
said: “I have sent my beloved Son out of the ebun- 
dance of my love towards men.” * * * 


We may go astray, but through the mercy that 
God is showering upon us, through His Son, we are 
saved. Never give up the struggle to get the mind 
and the spirit of the child to understand. No hour 
is too late to get influences just where they should be. 
Never while living despair of the work which the 
Lord has placed in their hands. * * * 

This is the rock upon which this people should 


166 


once more rally. If this spirit is strong enough *it 
will bring back into vital, living, throbbing work, men 
who long to be free, and to be satisfied. 

Out of this centennial alone there might go force 
enough, religious life enough, to make in the next 
century as vital work for the church as was made by 
our fathers here in the century which lias gone by. 


ofa 


GODS LOVE: 


ALBERT J. BROWN, PRES. WILMINGTON COLLEGE. 


For a century the destinies of these people have 
been worked out on this soil. In unity this-site was 
chosen, and the making of an interesting and strange 
history begun. 

To-day we celebrate the centennial of the found- 
ing of the first Monthly Meeting of Friends west of 
the Allegheny mountains. The century has had its 
days of storm and peril, and it has had its days of hope 
and assurance. This is the reunion —the reassertion 
of the law of love which unfolds to men the nature of 
the life hidden with God. 

The quality of the message of Quakerism and the 
nature of the polity it expresses had its origin in the 
conception which George Fox held of God. That he 
made a contribution to the thought and life of his 
time, destined to influence powerfully social and relig- 
ious institutions of succeeding generations, history 
fully substantiates. In a century of great men in 
England he appeared—this cobbler’s apprentice—and 
_remains even to this day unexplained save as he ex- 
plained himself. The Spirit of God dwelt in him, and 
moved upon his mind and heart. y 

The supreme thought which dominated the mind 
of Fox was: ‘God is love,” and dwells in the soul of 
‘man. The finite in man finds,its complement — the 
Infinite God — through the operation of the Spirit on 


168 


the mind of the believer. Clcse to this idea stands an- 
other essentially fundamental concept which George 
Fox incorporated in his system of thought. The char- 
acter of God is revealed to men. It is revealed through 
a conscious and enduring activity of Deity. So we 
read of the Nazarene having been sent through love 
to acquaint man with God; and to redeem him from 
sin, and to satisfy the yearnings of his soul. 

What this man conceived in the solitude of the 
moor or wood he wrought out in social as weil as 
personal experience. He brought forth a form of goy- 
ernment singularly free from the ceremonial life of . 
the church which has dissipated its power; and politi- 
cally free from unrighteous operations of governments 
which involve war and poverty on one hand and class 
distinctions on the other. It is a system of govern- 
ment which, operated in love under the influence of 
the Spirit, is unique and wonderful.’ But let the at- 
tempt be made to operate this system without love, 
and its framework vanishes and its organic foree dis- 
solves. 

Love is the rational side of justice. God created 
a moral world where love can interpret life. He did 
not create a judicial world wherein He seeks, night 
and day, the destruction of the sinner. To the woman 
who stood in shame before her Lord surrounded by 
her accusers He gave, out of His abundant loye, life’ 
instead of death, and when her accusers had fallen 
back from the tragic scene blinded and smitten by the 
light which cleansed | her, “Go and sin no more” was 
the message which fell swectly upon her ears and float- 
ed out on the wings of hope freighted with love to the 
generations which were to be. 

Love lays dowa laws of life and conduct, then ap- 
peals to men to obey them. What a man feels, in the 
presence of God, is due him from another man, he 


169 


must, in turn, when occasion demands, render to 
others. Such a faith took hold of Fox and his dis- 
ciples, and the generations of people called Quakers 
who have succeeded them. This principle the Holy 
Spirit taught them in the silent meditation which fol- 
lowed the spirit-conceived message from the Gospel. 

Love is the power which unifies life and makes it 
intelligent. It is a social tie which binds and makes 
us one in thought and achievement. It stills the pas- 
sions of men and clarifies the reason. It diminishes the 
discords and exalts the harmonies of daily living. 

Love operates through personality. George Fox 
was the person who conceived the idea of, and j is the 
person who lives in our institutions. These institutions 
are stable because that personality was stable His 
philosophy was worked out slowly and painfully. Men 
have thought him mad. He was driven by the Spirit, 
as the prophets of elder ages were, to the mountains 
or deserts or forests, to see the ‘flaming bush,” or 
“horsemen and chariots of fire.’ “The panic born are 
still born, not having touched life.” For years this. 
man, who emerged from his century untarnished in 
name and mighty in achievement, walked alone in the 
silence of the. night, the cleaming stars keeping watch 
over head, or stood in some lonely wood by day aside 
from the haunts of men, “treading the wine-press 
alone.” , Then One with the gift of life spoke to his 
condition and brought forth a man of power. 

Love seeks to operate in all phases of human ac- 
tivity. It admits of no class distinctions, thereby ex- 
cluding most of the ground work of social and indus- 
trial contention. » It holds the life of every man sacred 
and can not go to war. It believes every man is born 
free and equal before the law, and can not countenance 
slavery. It maintains the body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost and therefore can not sanction the manu- 


170 


facture and sale of intoxicants as beverages. It is 
grounded upon the principle of justice to all men, and 
therefore can not recognize strikes and lockouts nor a 
crushing wage system in a countfy of wealth. To the 
answer we receive for maintaining such a standard of 
life let it be said: “Call it ideal and impractical and go 
on warring industrially and suffering the pain of 
broken friendship, and the withering of soul; live by it 
and find life.” When the spirit of God is in men their 
councils are great in wisdom and influence. 


Years ago I came into the body of Friends by the 
‘principle of adoption. At that time I had not heard 
‘of the division. When in college a friend asked if I 
were Hicksite or Orthodox, and I replied “I do not 
know. I can not teil.” 

My Friends! After the experience of these meet- 
ings where we have been so graciously blessed, it seems 
We are one, again, after an hundred years. . The God 
of our larger destinies has kept watch above his own, 
and brought forth this scene. 


This is autumn, and the harvest is being gathered. 
The splendor of purple and gold lies, like a rich mantle, 
on these hills and valleys. Likewise the fruit of the 
Spirit has been manifest in this centennial commemo- 
ration, and the mantle of love has covered us all. 
Our souls have spoken to each other. What was truest 
and most divine has consecrated these days and hal- 
lowed this spot. We can never forget, for God is 
here. 


I have thought of the century which is past. I 
have thought of the pain and anguish borne; of the 
glory which faded when the sky of faith was gray with 
storm; of the dead who may not know of this holy 
hour, until the judgment day. 


171 


Out of all the differences of the past let us trust 
there may come a higher unity than men yet have 
known, when spirit answereth to spirit—it is well 
with my soul. “May God be merciful to us and bless 
us, and cause His face to shine upon us.” May He 
keep watch over us all for an hundred hundred years. 


ae 


Seth H. Ellis, Waynesville, Ohio: 


“Before we enter into the Silence I want to voice 
the sentiment of this whole house, to express our ap- 
preciation of the work of the large number of young 
people and of all who have busied themselves to see 
that everything has been done in good order. We are 
under obligations to them and we thank them for their 
attentions to us in the dining -ocm and elsewhere. We 
are certainly under great obligations to them, for they 
have shown every, self-denial in giving up all these 

eetings to serve us. 

“We undertook this with a great deal of anxiety. 
We went into it in the spirit of God and I believe we 
are not mistaken in thinking His Spirit has brooded 
over us, and we have had a grand time to our profit, 
and I hope to His glory. I wish to thank those who 
have appeared on the program. We feel deeply our 
obligations to the men and women who have appeared 
on this program coming from their far away homes, 
from Indianapclis and: other points in the West with- 
out one cent of compensation. We appreciate it. God 
bless you for it. As one of the presiding officers I 
feel under great obligations. Some said we would 
have disagreements, but we have had none. We trust- 
ed in God and His grace has been sufficient for us, as 
it always will be. Praise be to His Holy Name.” 
Chas. A. Brown, Waynesville, O.: 

“As one of the officers upon whom the responsi- 
bility of presiding at these meetings rested, I feel it 


173 


right to say that I am so thankful for that spirit of 
unity which has prevailed in these meetings and that it 
has been a pleasure and a delight to me throughout.” 


Eli Jay, Richmond, Ind.: 


“T desire to take this opportunity to express my 
heartfelt gratitude, and I feel that I express the senti- 
ment of the people—each and all—who compose 
this large and exceedingly interesting audience.” 


Samuel R. Battin, Selma, O., in a brief sentence 
or two relieved the pressure on the hearts of the great 
assembly by expressing tharks to the presiding officers 
and appreciation of their faithfulness and service. 


Seth H. Ellis: : 


“This is truly an hour of heart-worship and 
thanksgiving to God.” 


Preyer — Our Father, we feel this to be a season 
of thanksgiving, and we would acknowledge the power 
of Thy gracious love when it takes hold upon the 
hearts of men. Prepare us for the service that lies 
before us in the remainder of life’s Journey that we 
’ may labor to Thy honor and glory now and evermore. 
Amen. 


“Behold how good and how pleasant it is for 
brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the oil 
which is poured upon the head and flows down upon 
the beard.” 


174 g 
Esther S. Wallace, Richmond, Ind.: 


“Father of All! God! What we are is due to 
Thee. What we may become i is due to Thy ita 
Thy love and Thy power.” 


Seth H. Ellis: 


“The time has come for us to separate and leave 
this place, where we have gathered together in love . 
as brothers and sisters, and Thy Holy Spirit has been 
with us. We thank Thee for the history of the past, 
for the noble men and women who planned this feast, 
for their lives and their testimonies. Their work is 
finished. Grant that those of us who linger yet a 
few days may accomplish our work. Help us to keep 
in submission to Thy will. The old with the burden 
of the vears upon them, the middle-aged engaged in 
the active duties of life, and the young as they are 
preparing themselves to take up the responsibilities 
which must sooner or later come to them. 

“May the peace of God, which passeth all under- 
standing, dwell in our hearts and hen us in divine 
love through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 


aN 
San 


Date Due 


38-297 


Demco 


piv.g. 286.6 FOLIPO 


iFriends, Society of. Miami Monthly 
Meeting. 
Proceedings 


| 


1Se€0S0SE0d 


MOT 


